Love Letter from London

Critics at home & abroad have called U.S. television everything from pernicious (T. S. Eliot) to abysmal (Robert Hutchins). But last week U.S. TVmen could feel a little chirkier. Back in Britain after a short stay in Manhattan, TV Critic Leonard Mosley of the London Daily Express sat down and wrote them a soothing love letter.

"Beside the best U.S. efforts," wrote Critic Mosley, "our peak programs look as if they were produced by blind men stumbling around on their knees . . . There's fun, smoothness, zest, brashness, talent, originality . . . It's a funny thing, you seem to laugh more easily at American TV than you do at the comics on the BBC."

Mosley was delighted with such big shows as Studio One ("a brilliant production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus"), Fred Waring and Paul Whiteman. He was equally taken by "more modest programs" like What's My Line, Blind Date, Hollywood Screen Test, Life Begins at Eighty. As for vulgarity: "Well, America is a vulgar country in the broadest sense of the word, and some of its down-to-earth brashness is bound to rub off into TV . . . Bride and Groom is as embarrassing as watching your girl friend publicly eating peas off her knife. But on the whole the programs are high level. If there is glamour on view, there is usually talent along with it. You must talk with your mouth as well as your neckline now."

How did British TV look after his trip to the U.S.? Wrote Mosley: "I'm trying to be brave about it, and trying to stomach the same sort of dreary stodge that has been coming into your house and mine since I went away."

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