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TV Criticism
The Crystal Bucket: Television Criticism from "The Observer," 1976-79
Corner of cover and spine creased, page edges tanned. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.
- GenresNonfictionEssaysTv
237 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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55 people want to read
About the author
Clive James
94 books289 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
An expatriate Australian broadcast personality and author of cultural criticism, memoir, fiction, travelogue and poetry. Translator of Dante.
An expatriate Australian broadcast personality and author of cultural criticism, memoir, fiction, travelogue and poetry. Translator of Dante.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 14, 2021
Absolutely brilliant.
Of course, being Clive James, the writing is superb. So many clever ideas expressed so very cleverly: I’ve added still further to my stock of CJ aphorisms.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about reading this book in 2021 is the history lesson that it provides. Aside from contemporary affairs, the book provides a fascinating insight into popular culture at the end of the 1970s. Just like today, there was a lot of crap on TV, but I fear there is a good bit more of it today, with the standard for ‘good’ having slid some way in the intervening years.
There was a lot of faith on British TV back then, and an awful lot of culture - Shakespeare and Opera getting a healthy look in.
Loved it. Laughed out loud many times.
Of course, being Clive James, the writing is superb. So many clever ideas expressed so very cleverly: I’ve added still further to my stock of CJ aphorisms.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about reading this book in 2021 is the history lesson that it provides. Aside from contemporary affairs, the book provides a fascinating insight into popular culture at the end of the 1970s. Just like today, there was a lot of crap on TV, but I fear there is a good bit more of it today, with the standard for ‘good’ having slid some way in the intervening years.
There was a lot of faith on British TV back then, and an awful lot of culture - Shakespeare and Opera getting a healthy look in.
Loved it. Laughed out loud many times.
October 19, 2021
Someone who I always picture smiling and perspiring, taking in a sequinned variety act of nimble gamines with squinting unease, the special talent of James was to approach mass entertainment in the spirit of acceptance - acknowledging genius where he found it, giving even the rubbish a fair go, but never allowing that sense of fairness to turn into blindness, always remembering to reconsider what he’d just seen; keeping his critical faculties intact, even when watching the weather forecast. Since there must be a scepticism even when reviewing light entertainment, a kind of critical method when when dealing with something as inconsequential as Pan’s People.
It was a delicate balancing act, deceptively simple in the way only true deceit is. He saw that the only real way to interrogate something as apparently mindless as daytime television is by a kind of subterfuge, sneaking in a high brow reference under the cover of hapless larking. Anything else would have been too conspicuous. James had to smuggle in the big words by stealth, the grand allusions well between the margins, making sure not to attract attention to his considerable intellect, inadvertently making his readers feel dumb; and while it wasn’t perhaps as deserving as academia, there was arguably more skill in that subtle art of evasion than the heavy handedness that goes with extracting themes from Russian masterpieces, deep-rooted allusions from the works of Shakespeare, most of which have been brought to the surface many times before. In the end, it was far more challenging to write about David Bellamy than Fyodor Dostoevsky. Anyone can smash an idol to pieces. The art of gently taking a TV personality apart requires something else, something more like the light touch of a consummate light entertainer.
But that James could be equally iconoclastic, tearing through themes, demolishing reputations, was evident too - at least for anyone who took the time to read his criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. Noticeably though, his more serious works (Cultural Amnesia; Cultural Cohesion) weren't quite so persuasive: the focused intensity and specialised inquiry that the literary review demanded rarely brought out his best. He was the consummate light entertainer, happiest when simplifying for novices, far better at setting the scene than decoding the scene already set on paper. Since for James, who we tend to forget was a poet by first calling, literature was too many steps removed from immediate experience to satisfy his essentially poetic instincts. He needed direct, instant, unadulterated input; even if it came from a boxy rectangle in the corner of the room, it was at least a view he could take in and interpret at his own leisure.
To most of course, James known neither by his punditry or by the literary criticism. Nearly everyone knew him as a fixture of the small screen; a familiar tenant of the soft-furnished studio. Within the scope of his public persona, he was in many ways more lecturer than journalist, doing a good turn as a sort of brilliant but forgetful professor, equal parts ingenious and ginormous, expositing on images that may well have come from a compromised slide projector, given the things that flashed up on screen. Certainly, no one could accuse him of being a snob. There were Japanese crawling across beds of heaving cockroaches, sadhus doing theatrical things with snakes; traffic conductors singing in time to their semaphores on Roman piazzas, or James himself; wandering around dusty polyglot marketplaces, or otherwise being interrogated by towering, distressingly-dressed transvestites in Rio de Janeiro, all with that look of smiling unease that made him such an unmistakable presence, without ever detracting from the focus of the story.
Happily or not, the conventions of TV were what formed him, and the inbuilt prejudices and limitations of his second favourite medium carried him only as far as his audience would allow him, which was usually quite far enough. The rather dated content here suggests that he may have kept to the limits of that helpfully constrictive medium a little too doggedly. Most of the shows reviewed are long since forgotten, rendered obsolete by the drifting eye of taste; many, like the tantalising collaboration between Melvyn Bragg and Ken Russell, are now impossible to get hold of, lost to history, known only to their makers and those who manage the storeroom at the BFI. But James' brilliance was to conjure interest long after the fact, far past the point where the archivist would think to preserve. I don’t need to see Holocaust (BBC1) to appreciate the point about the aridity of the Nazi mind. I don’t need to watch an old episode of Panorama to get that producers too often steal their material from books when they could easily invent their own material, or that the Royals get far more attention than they really deserve. Some things never change; and even for the many things that do, James remains required reading.
It was a delicate balancing act, deceptively simple in the way only true deceit is. He saw that the only real way to interrogate something as apparently mindless as daytime television is by a kind of subterfuge, sneaking in a high brow reference under the cover of hapless larking. Anything else would have been too conspicuous. James had to smuggle in the big words by stealth, the grand allusions well between the margins, making sure not to attract attention to his considerable intellect, inadvertently making his readers feel dumb; and while it wasn’t perhaps as deserving as academia, there was arguably more skill in that subtle art of evasion than the heavy handedness that goes with extracting themes from Russian masterpieces, deep-rooted allusions from the works of Shakespeare, most of which have been brought to the surface many times before. In the end, it was far more challenging to write about David Bellamy than Fyodor Dostoevsky. Anyone can smash an idol to pieces. The art of gently taking a TV personality apart requires something else, something more like the light touch of a consummate light entertainer.
But that James could be equally iconoclastic, tearing through themes, demolishing reputations, was evident too - at least for anyone who took the time to read his criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. Noticeably though, his more serious works (Cultural Amnesia; Cultural Cohesion) weren't quite so persuasive: the focused intensity and specialised inquiry that the literary review demanded rarely brought out his best. He was the consummate light entertainer, happiest when simplifying for novices, far better at setting the scene than decoding the scene already set on paper. Since for James, who we tend to forget was a poet by first calling, literature was too many steps removed from immediate experience to satisfy his essentially poetic instincts. He needed direct, instant, unadulterated input; even if it came from a boxy rectangle in the corner of the room, it was at least a view he could take in and interpret at his own leisure.
To most of course, James known neither by his punditry or by the literary criticism. Nearly everyone knew him as a fixture of the small screen; a familiar tenant of the soft-furnished studio. Within the scope of his public persona, he was in many ways more lecturer than journalist, doing a good turn as a sort of brilliant but forgetful professor, equal parts ingenious and ginormous, expositing on images that may well have come from a compromised slide projector, given the things that flashed up on screen. Certainly, no one could accuse him of being a snob. There were Japanese crawling across beds of heaving cockroaches, sadhus doing theatrical things with snakes; traffic conductors singing in time to their semaphores on Roman piazzas, or James himself; wandering around dusty polyglot marketplaces, or otherwise being interrogated by towering, distressingly-dressed transvestites in Rio de Janeiro, all with that look of smiling unease that made him such an unmistakable presence, without ever detracting from the focus of the story.
Happily or not, the conventions of TV were what formed him, and the inbuilt prejudices and limitations of his second favourite medium carried him only as far as his audience would allow him, which was usually quite far enough. The rather dated content here suggests that he may have kept to the limits of that helpfully constrictive medium a little too doggedly. Most of the shows reviewed are long since forgotten, rendered obsolete by the drifting eye of taste; many, like the tantalising collaboration between Melvyn Bragg and Ken Russell, are now impossible to get hold of, lost to history, known only to their makers and those who manage the storeroom at the BFI. But James' brilliance was to conjure interest long after the fact, far past the point where the archivist would think to preserve. I don’t need to see Holocaust (BBC1) to appreciate the point about the aridity of the Nazi mind. I don’t need to watch an old episode of Panorama to get that producers too often steal their material from books when they could easily invent their own material, or that the Royals get far more attention than they really deserve. Some things never change; and even for the many things that do, James remains required reading.
August 2, 2017
Anyone who watches english tv will be mad not to read this....and its sequel
April 10, 2021
More terrific TV reviews
March 16, 2018
If you want to know whether criticism is an art form in itself then a reading of 'The Crystal Bucket' will show you it is. James is witty and erudite. He manages to do a fantastic job of contextualising what he's watching.
Obviously, these reviews are of television shown a long time ago, but some things - sports commentating I'm looking at you - hardly ever change. What it does make you aware of is that in the mid-to-late seventies when there were only three channels, none of which broadcast all day if my memory serves me, these channels broadcast new plays, Shakespeare, Opera and Ballet not just the stuff of current mainstream television fair. But these were the days when broadcasters felt that part of their remit was to show people 'high' culture. James's commentary on these is usually intelligent and thought-provoking. He knows his stuff.
But it is also very funny when it needs to be.
I can't recommend this enough. If you want to know how reviewing should be done then read this book.
Obviously, these reviews are of television shown a long time ago, but some things - sports commentating I'm looking at you - hardly ever change. What it does make you aware of is that in the mid-to-late seventies when there were only three channels, none of which broadcast all day if my memory serves me, these channels broadcast new plays, Shakespeare, Opera and Ballet not just the stuff of current mainstream television fair. But these were the days when broadcasters felt that part of their remit was to show people 'high' culture. James's commentary on these is usually intelligent and thought-provoking. He knows his stuff.
But it is also very funny when it needs to be.
I can't recommend this enough. If you want to know how reviewing should be done then read this book.
January 18, 2024
This is a re-re-read. I'm not in a good reading mood at the moment so I've dipped back into a comfort read. Enjoying the way Clive James writes his criticism in ways that are both witty and informative. The way he connects high and low culture and high and low ideas without coming across as a smart arse.
This book is also a reminder of a time when theatre and opera were broadcast on the BBC and ITV at peak times. And where current affairs wasn't just the same talking heads throwing pre-rehearsed sound bites and each other. There is something to be said for a bit of amateurism. Now politicians are better at avoiding answering questions and interviewers are less prepared to challenge dishonesty, except on a rare occasion.
It is also a reminder that talk of golden ages is a risk. Are we in a Golden Age of TV drama? Possibly. But for every Mad Men, you've got an I, Claudius. I think American TV drama is at a peak, although the stench surrounding HBO suggests that might be about to change. British TV I'm not so sure about.
But I'm not reviewing this book am I? Who cares. For most people who read this Clive James himself will be a dim and distant figure. If he is known at all. And the programmes he is discussing will be mostly unknown. However if you want to know how to write reviews then Clive James's work is an ideal school.
This book is also a reminder of a time when theatre and opera were broadcast on the BBC and ITV at peak times. And where current affairs wasn't just the same talking heads throwing pre-rehearsed sound bites and each other. There is something to be said for a bit of amateurism. Now politicians are better at avoiding answering questions and interviewers are less prepared to challenge dishonesty, except on a rare occasion.
It is also a reminder that talk of golden ages is a risk. Are we in a Golden Age of TV drama? Possibly. But for every Mad Men, you've got an I, Claudius. I think American TV drama is at a peak, although the stench surrounding HBO suggests that might be about to change. British TV I'm not so sure about.
But I'm not reviewing this book am I? Who cares. For most people who read this Clive James himself will be a dim and distant figure. If he is known at all. And the programmes he is discussing will be mostly unknown. However if you want to know how to write reviews then Clive James's work is an ideal school.
October 2, 2012
Hilarious, but probably very dated now... particularly love the star trek review.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews