The Times, November 26, 1979, by Fay Weldon
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There is an area of drama where the BBC excels almost 
without knowing it and I fear rather without deserving it--
when the diverse and exceptional skills of its employees 
raise what begins as ordinary ratings-fodder into the realms 
of craft-bordering-on-art. Such as series has been, from 
time to time, *The Secret Army*, born back in 1977, now 
drawing to its end, bridging the tricky Saturday gap between 
the enormous popular *The Generation Game* and *Match of the 
Day*. I have a nightmare, and I am sure entirely 
unjustified, vision of the conversation that attended its 
begetting.

"How about this one, folks? There's this cafe in Paris 
during the war, patronized by the occupying forces, and 
operating as a resistance cell. It's got everything. 
Nostalgia, torture, historical accuracy, good food..."

"No. Might offend the Germans."

Rapid thinking.

"We can always show them as real people, just doing their 
job."

"Um. But what we do for pretty girls?"

"They could run the cafe."

"You're on. But make it Brussels, not Paris. We can get 
Belgian co-production money."

And so they went ahead and provided us, in the face of all 
odds, with a taut, exciting, subtly written (for the most 
part) interesting weekly drama, 13 episodes a year for three 
years, and the pretty girls turned out to be real people 
after all, and the Germans very pretty indeed, and Brussels 
convincing, and everyone behaved as people observably do, in 
the real world, when under stress--that is, not very well at 
all. An episode ago the writer, Eric Pace, even shot down 
that admirable and excellent actor Paul Shelley like a dog, 
not a hero. I was shocked, but bowed to a kind of reality.

There is, in the making of such programmes, a level of 
professionalism, and sheer patient, largely unacclaimed, 
hard work from producer to script editor to writer to 
designer to vision mixer to editor by way of sound and 
lighting engineers that is probably equalled only in a heart 
transplant theatre. Easy enough, always, to criticize the 
finished product; easier still for programme planners to get 
fed up with so much ingratitude and simply join up *The 
Generation Game* and *Match of the Day.*



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                     Bentley's Bedlam
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