One Pair Of Eyes

What useful purpose is served by the creative artist in society? In a harsh world where millions starve, do poems or paintings or symphonies have any relation to events which actually affect men's lives? In this film Sir Michael Tippett, one of Britain's most eminent composers, examines the changing relationship between the artist and society. Looking at contemporary life with its mixture of humanity and violence, he suggests that we are living at a time in which there is growing hunger for the satisfaction of the inner world to which the artist speaks.

It's not unusual for people to come back from Los Angeles with horror stories about violence, pollution and the sheer unmanageable size of the place. But not Reyner Banham, Professor of the History of Architecture at London University. He loves many of the things about Los Angeles that others hate, from driving on the freeways to the garish commercial art that spreads along the boulevards and over the hillsides. And tonight he explains why he believes Los Angeles is a great city and a significant one.

Now that Britain has lost her empire is there a role for us in the world? Lord Caradon, formerly Sir Hugh Foot, who became internationally famous as Governor of Cyprus, and was for six years British Representative to the United Nations, believes that our opportunity in world affairs is greater now than ever before. But he also believes that our policy in Southern Africa and our apparently unconcerned attitude towards racial issues are isolating us and damaging our image amongst the developing countries of the world. Lord Caradon revisits the United Nations in New York where he talks amongst others to former Secretary General U Thant. He also returns to Jamaica where he was Governor 15 years ago to discover the feelings of a former colony towards Britain today.

'Almost everybody I know has firm opinions about almost everything. It's better to have halitosis than to have no opinion. The characteristic position I find myself in is one of cautious agreement with two incompatible points of view.' Playwright Tom Stoppard conducts an idiosyncratic search for certainty in a film involving a peacock, the M4, the Department of Weights and Measures, and a Professor of Physics.

'The core of Christianity is the Resurrection,' says Dooley, 'because the Resurrection is about hope and life.' Arthur Dooley, the internationally famous Liverpool sculptor, believes that the message of Christ is that mankind can triumph now. Since the war Dooley has watched his Liverpool 'torn apart by big business, politicians and soulless planners' out of touch with humanity. The hope lies with ordinary people realising their potential, resurrecting their own dynamic culture. He takes us through his devastated city to meet some of these people: the street painters by the Bluecoat Chambers; the pub poets and protest song writers; one of the last fishermen on the polluted Mersey; Chrissie Maher of the Tuebrook Bugle; Bill Shankly of Liverpool Football Club; and the men of the Mersey shipyards, 'the true artists of the nation in whom I put my faith.'

Mark Boxer is the resident cartoonist ('Marc') of The Times, and Associate Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine which he launched in 1962. At 41 he has achieved a degree of success which for many men would be the crowning point of a career. How can he continue the rest of his life without a sense of anticlimax? This question provides the theme of the programme. Boxer trains his fastidious and ironic gaze on himself. He recalls early successes and we see a typical Boxer day at present.

'The only thing worth having,' David Franklin asserts, 'is something you've worked to get and can take pride in.' Words and music have been the cornerstones of Franklin's life and on these he built two brilliant careers, first as an opera singer and then as a broadcaster. Two formal institutions, Cambridge and Glyndebourne, formed the man and fashioned his attitudes - a respect for fine sounds and a passionate belief in proud, old-fashioned things like dignity and manners; but the very disciplines he learned there have made him intolerant of the modern world 'with its greed for material things the easy way.'