Daytime TV

You don’t watch daytime TV do you? That would be Pointless and show you up as an Egghead. Allow me to digress …

I knew Rupert Hodson quite well. First from taking a holiday in Florence where he ran a school for English students and then when he came to live in my house for, frankly, rather too long. His wife, Lorna Sage, came to stay – thank goodness only once. In those days there was one bathroom which I used at 6.30. She set her alarm for 6.00, drew a bath consisting entirely of hot water and then finding it too hot went back to bed. I had cold water that morning. If Lorna’s name rings a bell it is because she wrote a memoir, Bad Blood.

Both Rupert and Lorna died early but Rupert deserves to be remembered. He was charming, cultured, lanky, larky and more than a bit mad. He knew something about everything but, had he appeared on Mastermind, his special subject would have been Wilkie Collins. Collins was a contemporary and close friend of Charles Dickens. His plays are entirely forgotten. However, some of his novels are still in print of which the best known is The Moonstone. It is a while since I read it and I intend to rectify this. As I recall it is narrated through the eyes of different characters in a story that combines detection and suspense.

What has this got to do with daytime TV? On Monday afternoons on BBC1 The Moonstone is being shown in five parts. I watched the first episode and it is an excellent adaptation, although why it has such a graveyard slot is as much of a mystery as The Moonstone.