"Channel Snore" to the Fore

By Richard Zoglin

Even in a country where "highbrow" and "television" are not mutually exclusive terms, Britain's Channel 4 seemed to be courting disaster. Created in November 1982 as an experimental alternative to the existing networks, its programming -- heavy on arts and politics -- caused it to be dubbed "Channel Snore" and "Channel Bore" by early critics. Conservatives railed against its alleged left-wing bias, but no one seemed to be paying enough attention to care. The audience for Channel 4's nightly newscast was so tiny that its anchorman, Peter Sissons, quipped that it would have been cheaper to call viewers individually and read them the news over the phone.

All that has changed. Less than four years later, Channel 4 is British TV's most heartening success story and a growing presence in the U.S. as well. A stream of movies reaching these shores, including The Draughtsman's Contract, Wetherby, My Beautiful Laundrette and Letter to Brezhnev, are products of Channel 4's innovative Film on 4 series. Max Headroom, the channel's computer- generated talk-show host, has become a regular on Cinemax, a darling of hip media critics and even a pitchman for Coca-Cola. Although PBS has picked up only a few Channel 4 offerings thus far (including some segments of the video- art series Alive from Off-Center), individual public-TV stations have aired several others, including The Price, a gripping six-hour mini-series about the kidnaping of a wealthy businessman's wife by Irish terrorists.

Channel 4 has a daunting mandate, set forth in the Broadcast Act of 1980: to serve tastes and interests not being satisfied elsewhere on the TV dial, either by the publicly funded BBC-1 and BBC-2 or by the advertiser-supported ITV. The network is financed by a fixed portion of ITV's advertising revenues; in return, ITV can sell commercial time on the new channel. Thus, while Channel 4 is indirectly supported by advertising revenues, it is insulated from the pressure for any particular show to win high ratings. Not that many of them are intended to. "If we get more than 10% of the viewers, I know we are not doing our job," says Jeremy Isaacs, Channel 4's program director and chief executive. The channel's frequently esoteric programming ranges from Symphonetta, a critically acclaimed series on 20th century music, and The Bandung File, a weekly look at issues facing Britain's growing Afro- Caribbean and Asian communities, to cultural specials like Critic Susan Sontag's introducing the works of the West German avant-garde choreographer Pina Bausch.

Yet Channel 4's audience has surpassed expectations, partly because the network has cannily mixed popular fare with the highbrow material. Its top- rated show is Brookside, a gritty, contemporary soap opera set in a Liverpool housing project. Its schedule also includes such U.S. imports as Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere and Cheers. The channel's weekly highlights of N.F.L. football games helped inspire Britain's current craze for the American sport. "We are not just an up-market cultural station," says Isaacs. "If we were so high-minded, we'd be dead by now."

Some politicians would shed no tears if the network were to meet that fate. Channel 4's news and public affairs programs often seem calculated to rock the boat. A series called Opinions gives a public figure 30-min. of airtime each week to expound on a controversial topic (Germaine Greer on Margaret Thatcher, Edward Teller on nuclear defense). Channel 4's 50-min. nightly newscast skips crime reports and the doings of royalty in favor of probing political analyses and stories on business, science and the arts. A 1985 documentary touched off a political scandal when it revealed that MI5, Britain's counterintelligence agency, had engaged in illegal wiretapping of union officials and political activists.

The Channel 4 movies that have become art-house hits in the U.S. are products of an ambitious effort to wed cinema and television: the network has co-funded more than 70 feature films. Its purely TV offerings have appeared more spottily in this country, but the sampling has been impressive. The Price, for example, is a suspense thriller that transcends its genre by an uncompromising, morally complex examination of the characters involved; 26 Bathrooms, a tongue-in-cheek tour of lavish and eccentric British lavatories, is the sort of loopy project one could never imagine on American TV. Though much of Channel 4's comedy does not travel well, Consuela, a 40-min. film directed by Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette), is a neat, funny parody of Hitchcock's Rebecca and half a dozen other psychological horror films.

Isaacs hopes that Channel 4's adventurous, often abrasive fare will reach a wider audience in this country. "Americans say they love British TV, but virtually nothing from British TV is shown on American television," he contends. "Most of what is shown is the worst of what we do. Masterpiece Theatre concentrates on simple, safe costume dramas." Simple and safe: two words that do not seem to exist in Channel 4's lexicon.

With reporting by Mary Cronin/London