Transatlantic Hop

U.S. audiences in eight cities last week got their first chance to compare British television with the domestic product. What they saw was a filmed version of Cafe Continental, an hour-long BBC music-hall revue boiled down to 15 minutes and burdened with the addition of four long-winded commercials for Conmar Zippers.

By U.S. standards, Cafe was well above average, a briskly paced, lighthearted series of variety acts with a minimum of Berlesque mugging. The Continental flavor was supplied by Swiss yodeling, Gypsy music and French acrobatics. But top honors went to shapely Singer Isabel Bigley, a New Yorker who went to London in 1947 as the lead in Oklahoma! and hopes that another year abroad will give her enough experience for a successful assault on Broadway. "But if M-G-M would like to twist my arm," she says, "I'd be happy to go into pictures, too."

Some Britons, who have often taken a rather lofty tone toward the shortcomings of TV shows in the U.S., were worried that Americans might think the lowbudget, unassuming Cafe Continental was the best they could do. Said a BBC official: "Had it been television drama we were exporting, we could really have shown the U.S. something."

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