Good stories are not hard to find

Filipino dramatic productions on television--except for a very few that did not last long--have always been more boring than not. And there are no productions more boring than the local teleseryes that have sprung, no thanks to the ratings war between the two largest local TV networks.

Which is, to me, totally incomprehensible. Why hasn't any local TV network executive in charge of dramatic production ever gotten it into his head to visit a school library or a local book store and, taking an armful of the classics (or even the newer published books) given his scriptwriters orders to produce an adapted script out of every story in a published book of short stories, out of every segment of a novel, out of every chapter of a biography or autobiography? There is no shame in adapting a published story to film or television, as long as the effort is a genuine adaptation and the proper credits are given.

Then, perhaps we can watch stuff on local television more interesting than the eternal love triangle, the battered child or spouse, and the scheming madrasta or lustful stepfather.


"Impressions," TV Times, 3-9 June 1979

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Watching Peping on and off can provide the viewer with regular exercises in suspended disbelief. One time, and the little boy appears and disappears from the screen like everybody's favorite dwarf. Another time, and he goes frolicking around with a portly friar. More recently, he suffers nightmares about an unborn brother. All of that strains my credulity a lot.

Yet, I am somehow thankful--for a few pluses that are outside the quality of Peping's episodes and not tied up with whether they are worth viewing or not.

I am glad that at last, we have found another child talent worth building up--someone more mannered, less quarrelsome than Niño Muhlach. Someone more in the mold of your child and everybody else's. Precocious, but in the quiet manner of most Filipino children, without the shrill and sometimes oppressive flamboyance set by local cinema's current child wonder.

Perhaps we can then have more drama series other than those about love (as in romance) and storylines a little more different from the rest, with a twist here and there. A child can bring light to the dark weave of the Filipino psyche.

Not that Peping's episodes have, so far, been exactly promising. In the one that I watched recently, Peping's mother and father separate because of the mother's jealousy, only to come together when Peping disappears. Nothing new to the storyline. Even the existence of the father's daughter by another woman does not make the episode any more imaginative or interesting.

What is interesting, though, is the fact that the episode provides a few glimpses into the tired old world of local television drama. I had wondered all the while where newer station-produced dramas are going, and how they will get there. If Peping is any indication--and why should it not be, when it was given a prime-time slot--then I can say that local station-produced dramas are trying to move up in ideas but failing in the implementation.

Essentially, the episode of Peping that I am talking about is another overextended hour anchored on a very thin storyline, very slow pacing, and very trivial acting.

The storylines of local dramas simply cannot be improved unless the stations are willing to develop a full stable of good writers and a full inventory of good stories. This should not really be difficult because nobody demands that all stories presented on television be original, only that they throw some piquant and arresting light on the obscurity of the human tragedy or the absurdity of the human comedy.

To do this, the networks can cull from the best and the worst of the world's literature--including our country's own--and compress, condense, adapt, snip, scissor-and-tape, visualize. I shall be the last to fault the networks for adapting--from the West or the East, from Europe or Asia--existing stories as long as proper acknowledgment is made. I shall be the first to complain--as I have complained in the past--about purported originals that are not original at all.

With substantial storylines and tight scripting, pacing should not be the problem it is today for local dramas and local directors. A director can do no more with an eight-page loose script for a 45-minute dramatic episode--unless he is extraordinarily adept, totally experienced, remarkably literary, in which case, as with film, the drama becomes the director's medium--except to implore his performer to look lugubriously at space, cry copiously and endlessly, shake his head violently, and stare fixedly at the camera.

Out on location, a director can at least make performers walk long stretches or drive long distances, providing a little movement and a little interest. But within the tight confines of a studio set, a director has nothing to work on but the performer's faces. Unless it is the hideous Mabini paintings. Or the ubiquitous centerpieces of plastic flowers.

And acting cannot but be influenced by storyline and role. No performer can afford to dum-dum it through a weighty story, a demanding role, masterful direction, and inspired acting by other performers. He goes dum-dum once, and he sticks out like a sore thumb. He does it another time, and he bombs before he has even ignited.

But when the storyline is trivial and the pacing is slow and the performances are all limp, then what should be the mean becomes the standard. The result is episodal mediocrity. Mediocre episodes lend credence to charges that the small screen is a mediocre medium.

That is why I have always held out for a substantial storyline as the basic requirement for interesting drama. Stories we can really chew on, not sleep through. There is no lack of such stories, if our television writers will only swallow a little of their misdirected pride, dig deep into the bottomless mine of world and local literature, and put in a little more work into fleshing out their scripts. So much depends on a good storyline--on stage, in literature, on film. And definitely, on television.

-- NBT

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No title in original published column

Even more life after TV

In the '70s and '80s, almost everybody agonized over the supposedly inordinate hold of television on children's time and minds. Parents, teachers, and psychoanalysts worried about the controlling violence, the social instability, the emotional emptiness and discontent, the sexual abnormalities they suspected the small box would work on the psyches of generations of children.

For a whole decade now, the same fears are being expressed, this time about another small box--to be more accurate, a whole information network carried on a decreasing screen size--with a greater reach and more dangerous potential. Perhaps another decade, and we will be worrying about an even more powerful adversary, still beyond our ken today, that will be invented to capture man's imagination and, at the same time, endanger his humanity.

With time--28 years now after I wrote these pieces--I have come to a more serene acceptance of the inevitable destiny of the human race. As thinking occupants of this planet, we cannot stop the creativity and ingenuity our minds are capable of. All we can do is hope that as science and technology advance, so will faith and the integrity of the human spirit.


"Impressions," TV Times, 27 May-2 June 1979

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There is still an overwhelming majority of crime dramas on local television, compared to shows belonging to other genres, as far as prime-time canned programs are concerned. On the present schedule, there are as many as 12 American and 4 British crime dramas during the week, placing the ratio on the average at 2-and-a-little-more canned crime dramas a night.

Not that this should cause intense worry among social scientists, educators, and psychoanalysts. Or so I believe. The thing is to get an adequate and palatable mix of different shows from the other genres, which should not be too difficult considering that the present weekly schedule offers at least 8 half-hour comedy rib-ticklers, 5 musicals, 7 action/adventure shows, 6 dramatic series, and 3 science-fiction teasers. And we are not even counting the local shows, which are nil on crime and heavy on tearjerkers and musical/variety shows.

And if you notice, even the canned crime dramas are now coming with a very welcome shot of humor, certainly to keep the violence from further disrupting those who are already a little emotionally unsteady. The new season of Quincy, M.E., with its remarkable use of forensic medicine and its unabating analyses of corpses, often takes time off from crime-snooping to deliver a lesson or two on living and human relations. And Jack Klugman often affects an occasionally piquant face and delivers a timely hilarious line.

Eddie Capra Mysteries goes light a great many times. Capra is persistent, merciless, savage, shrewd, irreverent. But he also exhibits a marked sense of humor, a dedication to the truth, and a definite love for children. And who can deny that much of what keeps the young glued to CHiPs is not the action, not the violence, but Erik Estrada? Kaz is not only funny, he is uproarious, a true caricature, with Ron Leibman acting the role--the lawyering, the coarse shouting, the drum-playing--with cool humor and easy amiability. Even the prosecution lawyer with whom Kaz always tangles in court is a true and truly amusing caricature.

Of course, Starsky and Hutch may keep the blood pouring in great arterial gushes and surely, many times, we want to rap Delvecchio and his big mouth. But Harry-O, with his constant philosophizing about life and living, paints a sensitive portrait of the detective as an innocent: neither tolerating nor espousing violence, but dreaming only of the beach when a case is over, and a girl to go with the beach cottage. He is at once poignant and wonderfully funny and, in the balance of adult perceptions, must surely weigh two tons above the others.

Even the second-stringers in the list of canned crime fighters are real lightweights, though lovable ones. Steve McGarrett of Hawaii Five-O is the superfluous champion of self-conscious overacting; Jigsaw John is middling, plodding, but competent; Man Undercover's David Cassidy suffers--on the local schedule--from heavier competition on the same timeslot.

Which is why I can hardly agree with those parents who keep their children off television completely for one reason or another: there's too much crime and violence on TV; there's very little creativity; it is nothing more than a fantasy machine. I certainly do not think you should make the television a full-time babysitter. I also do not think you should let children watch certain shows without some sane adult company.

But I believe that the television set, properly used, can be another complement to a child's never-ending world of learning. After all, a child's day should be a beautiful patchwork of teaching activities, enriching contacts and broadening experiences. With a parent's help, television can be one more of such--constantly opening a child's eyes to the world around him, his heart to people everywhere, his spirits to the beauty of ideals and the nobility of a good life. And every time I watch television with the children--answering with utmost care the endless why's of my three-year-old thinker, wondering at the images etching grooves in the memory of my one-year-old visualizer--my belief is reinforced.

The technique, of course, is to provide the child with a wealth of other experiences throughout the day and throughout all his growing-up days so that television will not become his exclusive guide to life and reality, so that television will become--with enough selectivity--another useful source of information, knowledge, entertainment, even art. As it really is.

Besides, what is wrong with vicarious experience, with fantasy? Literature is no less a vicarious experience. So is film (and ours was the film-and-literature generation). And theater. Fantasy can make up the stuff of ambition, heroism, courage, daring, idealism. As long as the child is advised that television is not the world, and that a bigger reality flows all around him--not out of the small home screen-- then, television shows should comprise just one more addition to the collective memory of his generation and the singular development of his own human and humanizing wholeness.

-- NBT

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No title in original published column

Laughing through a roast

Today, with cable, we can get anything we want--within the parameters of decency, of course--from the television screen. If not at the time we want it, then all we need to do is be patient. So, for would-be dance divas, the dance contests that highlight the best dancers and the best choreographers. And for those who don't care for dancing, a multiplicity of options: one-man comedy acts, nonstop drama/melodrama series, musicals, art shows, news, sports.

Back in the '70s and '80s, the choices for Filipino televiewers were very limited. Once you found a good thing, you had to hold on to it and hope there were others doing so and that, together, you could organize enough critical mass to sway the decision-makers, whether in local or foreign networks.

Of course, I wondered sometimes if they ever listened to me. I never got telephone calls from survey companies asking me what shows I watch on television, or what brand of anything I purchase. Not what I feel or believe about the country, the government, our leaders. Not on any topic of national, business, or entertainment interest. At all.

Perhaps I should be happy I was never a statistic.


"Impressions," TV Times, 29 April-5 May 1979

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I do love a good roast. Perhaps it is because I prefer to be hit by the verbal club rather than be socked by the sight gag. What Bob Hope says is what makes me laugh, not how he looks. How Cloris Leachman (in Phyllis) thinks is much funnier than what she does.

So, I like Something, at least the roasting part of it. The other numbers, I can get--and sometimes better--in other shows. The backdrop, I can gawk at--and better-looking ones--in House and Garden. But the roast I will take, with great laughter. Now.

Many will say the show is a blatant imitation of a foreign production. But comedy should be universal, and I cannot be expected to control my laughter just because it comes courtesy of a foreign format. And as long as every other show on local television does not imitate it, an hour of roasting a week is welcome.

Thankfully, those who roasted the roastee in that episode of Something that we watched did it with truly evident affection for the roastee, rather than with the ill-concealed coldness with which their American counterparts perform the exercise in many a Dean Martin roast. Some of the lines said about Maya Valdez were mirth-provoking and uproariously funny, managing to exercise the funny bone while keeping a sympathetic finger on the human pulse.

I would not know, of course, whether any roastee's seat is cool enough for him to be able to laugh through an hour of roasting. There are many who consider a roasting an exercise in emotional violence and offhand cruelty. But I do know something. Anybody who can laugh while others rip off his masks and and smash his defenses cannot but gain in inner confidence and wisdom. The experience is simply too unique not to figure in the individual's consciousness. And anybody who can smile through a roast, and smile at those who roasted him after the event, in all sincerity, seeing it neither as an insult nor a critique but very simply a show, has effectively underscored his stability and accepted his humanity.

Aside from that, and certainly equal to it, is the fact that a roast can provide ordinary viewers a few good and booming laughs. At other people's expense, of course. But what can be very much wrong with doing it while they are around and not when their backs are turned?

A warning, though. The time will surely come, and soon, when the show's producers will find it difficult getting roastees with enough confidence in themselves and roasters who are both excellent wits and real friends of the roastee. When that time comes, we hope the producers will know that the time to end the show has finally and irrevocably arrived.

******

Mga Kuwento ng Pag-ibig very often manages to entice. It is technically well-done, with storylines that are crisp and crackling. The talents, too, often perform creditably. Those who do not are, at least, not made to look silly and stupid.

But now, Armida Siguion-Reyna can perhaps turn her attention to the development of lesser-known--and even unknown--talents with the face, the flair, the flamboyance for TV acting. Plus the sensitivity for the kind of dramatic productions she likes.

Charo Santos is undoubtedly a very competent, highly skilled performer, with her own taut style of delineating a role, but it would also be worthwhile to watch other talented names and faces make it in the kind of roles she often portrays for Aawitan Kita Productions.

The stage should be a good place for starting the hunt.

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I have nothing against dance shows, and this opinion must be a minority one. But I find 3-1/2 hours of dancing on television every week--plus the sporadic dancing in all those other daytime variety shows that cannot seem to do without dance numbers--just a little too much. Especially since the dances all look alike and there is no real effort to instruct the viewers.

Dancing, admittedly, is an art. And television, as a mass medium, should devote a little time and attention to it if it is to satisfy the needs of its vastly varied audience.

But must I have 3-1/2 hours of it a week? And why only disco dancing? And should the dance programs come a little too close to each other in the week?

I don't particularly like Deney Terio (he is straight out of glittery, garrulous Hollywood) of Dance Fever, but it seems to me he has the best idea for making a disco dance program watchable: fast pacing, some judging, a little instructional at the end, and short, short, short.

Penthouse 7 is simply too long. After the first hour, boredom sets in. The dance numbers should probably go through stricter screening. Some dances of the modern group appear to serve no purpose. A little less of the cutie-pie chatter (which, as I can deduce from some of the letters received by "Feedback," riles many viewers, and I can understand why), even less of the plugs, a tighter show all throughout--these may help make the show more tolerable.

-- NBT

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No title in original published column