The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 75

Beggars for America's best Magical in the dancing dark 0S funded television came first, but a small number of educational stations, financed by colleges and foundations, grew in the Fifties and Sixties. In 1970 these were formalised into PBS, America's nearest equivalent to the BBC. Virtually the only plays and documentaries on American television can be found on PBS. It's the same for music, arts and decent children's programmes. PBS also has the most respected news programme, the nightly McNeil-Lehrer News Hour.

Throughout the past fortnight, PBS stars and celebrities including Alistair Cooke, Sir David Attenborough and Diana Rigg have been asking subscribers for cash. Tonight, the last night, it is the turn of the heads of the stations, rather as if Michael Checkland appeared on BBC1 pleading for money. The begathon is a television event in itself. Every evening public-spirited people answer phones at their local PBS station as cash and charge-card pledges come in. They sit behind desks of serried ranks, rather like an enlarged Blankety Blank set, as presenters make on-air appeals.

It can seem a bit naff. Instead of Terry Wogan's old golf clubs being auctioned for a telethon, on PBS last week it was a 'soft and fluffy, 11-inch-high' toy panda which you would get if you pledged $75 during a documentary on the baby panda. To make it seem as if pledges are coming thick and fast, the volunteers keep talking on the phone while in camera shot, even if there are no real callers. This usually works and by 9.30pm the lines really are buzzing. Credit cards are preferred as cash offers may not actually materialise.

'Put it on your plastic' is the cri de coeur. While only about 3 per cent of Americans watch PBS at any one time (admittedly there is often a choice of 40 stations), it has a devoted and influential following. David Stewart of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting: 'People usually flick through the other channels rather like a catalogue. PBS is more like a selected The PBS viewer is slightly more up-market and educated than the average American and the programmes Channel 4's A Very British Coup has just been reshown on Masterpiece Theatre; ITV's Poirot is now running on the Mystery Hour are tailored to this audience. While the big three US networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, turn further and further away from innovative or even interesting television, PBS will carry the flag for class.

It mounted a one-and-a-half-hour special the day of Nelson Mandela's release, while the networks only gave it a few minutes in their half hour bulletins. 'The networks like us because we let them off the hook about doing any public service says Daniel Agan, PBS's vice-president for national programmes. While right-wing attacks in the early years of the Reagan Administration failed to trim the federal budget for public television or radio, this does not mean public service broadcasting is financially healthy. The rising cost of programmes has led to calls for more co-production among PBS stations as well as with international collaborators. A group of PBS representatives are visiting like-minded stations around the world now, and will see the BBC in April to discuss a worldwide link-up among public service television companies.

Although British stations might be happy to co-operate, let's hope they never have to resort to the begathon. Masterpiece in America: Ray McAnally in 'A Very British Coup'. The popular pirates of Vietnam Steve Vines in Hanoi discovers a television station that steals its best shows. sibility for keeping itself afloat. For this reason, it has tentatively dipped its toes into the world of advertising and started broadcasting its first commercials.

Some advertise private companies, a greater number extol the virtues of state corporations, and some are adverts paid for by families wanting to announce a wedding or some other notable family occasion. The net result of all the changes in Vietnamese television has been to boost audiences and create new interest in a medium which was steadily being undermined by a flood of pirated videos smuggled in from Thailand, offering strong competition to the previously unchanging stodgy format of the Government television station. Vietnam seems to have learned the lesson that influence is not only a question of control but also of making the message more palatable, or, as Mr Lam puts it, 'We now know that making lighter programmes is more useful equipment. It is far less than a British television company spends on one series of programmes. For this reason, Mr Lam has turned to pirated tapes.

The French television series, Angeli-que, has just finished a run which cleared the streets on the nights it was shown. The American film classic, Gone with the Wind, also went down well, as did a British version of Jane Eyre. It is not clear whether the makers of these films will receive any Vietnamese royalties. Since the beginning of the year, Vietnamese viewers have been offered a choice of two television channels, plus, for those who can get it and can speak Russian, live television because I knew his They slept together after their first meeting. Romola, the young society girl overwhelmed by Nijinsky's dancing, set out to break through the Chinese wall Diaghilev has erected around his protege.

She described the sensual impact of Nijinsky's presence; through her we saw and felt him dance. Her marriage to Nijinsky precipitated the disastrous break with Diaghilev. Cherie Lunghi mixed passion, cunning and sensuous insight as the determined schemer stalking her prey, finally getting him alone on a slow boat to Rio. With 21 days of ocean and sky, and no Diaghilev, a proposal and marriage quickly followed, as did the stark dismissal telegram from Diaghilev. Nijinsky wanted to leave her after three days, but knew it 'would be caddish and so I stayed'.

This was radio dramatisation at its stunning best, tackling a visual subject with verve and imagination. The other half of the tribute was a repeat of the 1965 production of Nijinsky's diaries read by Paul Scofield. His Nijinsky was stronger, more assertive, acted less like a victim and plaything. The text was edited by Romola Nijinsky with music specially composed by Richard Rodney Bennett. The diaries chart the inevitable and cruel slide into madness.

Updated, sometimes every hour, they are obsessive, repetitive, full of images of Christ-like power, ego-centricity, and vision. He said, 'I am all feeling through God and flesh. My madness is my love to all A haunting, powerful journey. Radio 3 couldn't stop dancing last week. Last Sunday's edition of Third Ear was devoted to dance in London and on Tuesday there was a mythological monologue, Fair Kirsten, about a heavily pregnant Danish princess who is forced by her brother the king to dance through the night with 12 men.

It is, she discovers, a dance of death. That's enough dancing on the radio for a while. Listeners can return to being wallflowers for a few weeks. Saturday 12.05-1. 25am Frankenstein (Channel 4, film, 1931): British director James Whale's Hollywood horror classic made Mary Shelley's spare-part surgeon (Colin Clive) and his creature permanent fixtures in popular culture.

It also made Boris Kar-loff, born 1687 in London as Bill Pratt, a household name. The script creaks as loudly as the doors, but it's a remarkable film. 1.25-2.55 The Ghoul (Channel 4, film, 1933): Little-known collector's item produced by Michael Balcon, about an Egyptologist coming home to London bearing curses from poisoned tombs. A vintage cast includes Boris Kar-loff (returning to make his first British film), Cedric Hardwicke and Ralph Richardson. Films: Philip French shrinking number of young people.

Repeated Thursday 11am LW. Paul Jones (Radio 2, 9pm): More Sixties heroes as Van Morrison talks about his renewed preoccupation with the blues. Friday The Fool (Radio 3, 8.50pm): Edward Bond's Royal Court play about the 'peasant poet' John Clare, and the exploitation of the human imagination. Giselle Dancing (Radio 4, 9.15pm): Aside from being reviewed and interviewed, ballet dancers understandably get short shrift from radio. Undeterred, producer (and Kaleidoscope editor) Richard Banner-man has seized the challenge.

After his memorable award-winning feature about Ravel's Bolero, comes a two-part feature on the ballet Giselle and the agonies and ecstasies of dancing it, as told by Lynn Seymour and others. More likely to be witty, finely edited montage than a romantic tale of greasepaint-and-tutus. cms Russell Twisk closed his eyes and enjoyed great ballet. THE centenary of Vaslav Nijin-sky's birth let loose a torrent of dancing on the radio last week. His legendary ballet performances in Paris at the beginning of the century can now only be imagined.

The memories and anecdotes about the odd couple from Ballets Russes may have improved over the years but it is difficult to conceive what all the fuss was about when the only evidence is a few stills, jumpy film and over-polished retrospection. But radio, with its sound pictures, evocative music, sensitive actors, good script and adept direction, can work wonders. By shrewdly using the diaries and words of the principal players Diaghilev, Romola and Ni-jinsky the BBC came up with a worthy tribute. The God of the Dance (Radio 4) and The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky (Radio 3), managed to evoke the excitement and magic of his work and the brooding, inevitable tragedy of his downfall. Listeners could believe they had seen Nijinsky dance.

Diaghilev, the seducer, dom-inator and ultimate destroyer of Nijinsky, was brought to loathsome life by Robert Stephens in a masterly performance in The God of the Dance. His voice curled wantonly as he described their first meeting: 'Vaslav's eyes were very serious, sometimes provocative, his long neck was exceptionally muscular, but in many ways he looked ordinary that is until he danced He was young and searching for a father. I took that place. Everything he ever needed was paid for, I arranged everything. Vaslav was seeking a master, I was the master of modern ballet.

As an artist he was all light. I could see no Nijinsky, played with a hesitant, slightly whining North Country accent by Anton Lesser, remarked that he disliked Diaghilev from the start for 'his too self-assured voice. I hated him, but pretended farcical comedy set in an acutely observed world of New York theatre and TV daytime drama, where rebarbative actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman at his best) challenges theatrical values and sexual roles by becoming the female star of a soap opera. Director Sydney Pollack has a remarkable cast and a brilliant Larry Gelbart script to work on, and he himself figures in a priceless scene as Hoffman's agent. 11.30-1.25 The German Sisters (Channel 4, film, 1981): Mar-garethe von Trotta's sympathetic, fiercely intelligent essay on how a West German pastor's two daughters (Jutta Lampe, Barbara Sukowa) confronted the post-war world one as a feminist writer, the other as a Baader-Meinhof terrorist.

Dramatising a true story in all its complexity, this is among the major European pictures of the 1980s. celebrate 20 years of folk music on Radio 2. Third Ear In New York (Radio 3, 7.05pm): After yesterday's File on 4, a cautionary tale: the American version of corporate culture. Thursday Letter from Israel (Radio 4, 9.45pm): Gerald Butt, the BBC's Jerusalem correspondent, on the increasing polarisation of Israeli society and the growth out of the soil of Palestinian frustration and pessimism of Islamic fundamentalism. Should be heard in conjunction with Turbulent Priests (Radio 4, 11.25am LW only): A programme on Israeli fundamentalism: The Rev Dr Edward Norman interviews the fanatic Rabbi Melr Ke-hane, leader of the Israeli Kach Party which fights (though it's banned from elections) for an all-Jewish state where Arabs have no right of citizenship.

Analysis (Radio 4, 8pm): Professor A. H. Halsey examines Britain's shifting demographics, and predicts the future, with its Richard Brooks reports on the telethons that keep good broadcasting afloat in the US. IT'S begathon time in America as the collection tins rattle for television. Tonight is the finale of an extraordinary annual fortnight when the good people of the United States pledge their dollars to keep alive the Public Broadcasting Service the network of 337 television stations that form the only part of the vast American TV system not funded by advertisements.

Britain has its telethons for worthy causes, such as Children in Need. The begathons might not seem quite so worthy, but they are necessary. Last year $1.2 billion, nearly one quarter of PBS's funding, came from its subscribers. The rest of PBS's money comes from local government, businesses, foundations and the federal government, which hands over about $220 million to PBS through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Yet that sum is less than the total spent by Washington on military marching bands.

Of course, there is no licence fee in America. Advertising- 'WE ARE in complete glasnost says Pham Khac Lam, the director-general of Television Vietnam, a broadcasting organisation which is a miracle of ingenuity, guile and, to put it bluntly, theft. Mr Lam is a former journalist who was put in charge of the station one and a half years ago as it was passing from an era of less than riveting documentaries about the wonders of the latest rice crop to a new era of beefed-up news reporting and the introduction of genuinely entertaining programmes, some simply broadcast from pirated foreign film cassettes. The broadcasting empire inherited by Mr Lam consists of one small television studio equipped with a hybrid of Eastern European and Japanese equipment, some of which would not look out of place in a museum, and a staff of 800 people. That's 'more than is necessary', says Mr Lam, who has no powers to reduce numbers.

A second, larger studio has been Monday 7.35-8.00 Best of British The movie series returns with a celebration of films made by ITC Lord Grade's production company in the' Seventies and Eighties. Narrated by the late Sir Anthony Quayle, this evening's programme excerpts from Madame Sin with Bette Davis, The Eagle Has Landed, On Golden Pond, Sophie's Choice and Soys from Brazil. 8.10-9.00 Horizon (BBC2): 'Britannic Warm, windy winters and hot summers are attributed to the Greenhouse Effect. But the change in temperature has a knock-on effect, as some scientists are beginning to discover. When we are established in what the commentary ominously describes as 'the greenhouse', we can say goodbye to bluebells, trout, and swallows; but hello to poisonous algae, 'fungal suprises', rising sea-levels and a dreadful thing called a 'carbon feedback loop', which is the concern of an independent-minded boffin called Dicky Clymo, who goes around collecting peat-bog gases with the help of a dustbin and a packet of condoms.

8.30-9.00 Joint Account (BBC1): Return of the role reversal domestic comedy with Peter Egan as the house-husband and Hannah Gordon as his bank-executive wife. You know this is sitcom country because neighbours walk in the back door without bothering to knock. But it's an oddly spiky sort of humour much more abrasive than in the previous series. 9.30-10.10 Panorama (BBC1): 'Poll Taxing Their Faced with the poll tax, the disgruntled electorate can either pin the blame on central Government (for under-funding) or on local government (for overspending). In the week of the Budget and the Mid-Staffordshire by-election, it's a critical choice.

10.00-11.00 Eurocops (Channel 4): 'Hush The West German contribution to the series from the ZDF network again features Heiner Lauterbach as Inspector Dorn investigating the death of a truck driver in YOUTH SPONSORSHIP LLOYDS BANK built, but it cannot be used because the television station has no money to equip it. Vietnam's rickety infrastructure makes it impossible for Television Vietnam to reach the whole nation. 'Vietnam is linked politically and economically, but not laments Mr Lam. However, he draws some comfort from the mischievous thought that a satellite station inherited from retreating American troops in the South now serves as a means of communication with Moscow and gives Vietnam a live feed of Soviet television. Mr Lam's annual budget for the purchase of all supplies and equipment from abroad is (437,500) almost double last year's amount.

This has to buy film, tapes, imported programmes, parts for existing equipment and new Cologne. Aiming to highlight, rather than merge national characteristics, Eurocops makes an interesting contrast to ITV's new TECX series (see Thursday). Tuesday 8.0-8.30 Open Space (BBC2): 'A Shabby Dog An angry, cogent essay from the RSPCA, arguing for the Introduction of a national dog registration scheme. Such a scheme operates in West Germany where the pounds are half empty. RSPCA workers say they have seen the number of stray dogs double in the past 10 years.

Dogs are housed for a week before being destroyed: their stiffening bodies lugged out in plastic bags a distressing, demoralising task. 10.30-11.20 Omnibus (BBC1): 'Sunday in the Park with Wearing his new hat as visiting professor of drama at Oxford University, Stephen Sondhelm confesses that he has no formal teaching experience. Meanwhile his students attend National Theatre rehearsals for the British premiere of his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George. Wednesday 9.15-10.00 Signals (Channel 4): 'The New The fall of the Berlin Wall caught spy thriller writers on the hop. Some like Tim Sebastian have had to perform hasty rewrites and the end of the Cold War may seem like bad news for fans of the genre.

But will authors like Frederick Forsythe, Jack Higgins and Tom Clancy find themselves gazing hopelessly at the blank sheet of paper? One hardly thinks so. 9.25-10.15 Never Come Back (BBC2): Dave Pirie, author of the excellent TV play Rainy Day Women, set in war-time Britain, has adapted John Mair's cult novel, which was published in 1941. Mair was killed in a flying accident in 1942, so he, like his novel, never saw the World War II through the rosy glow of myth and nostalgia. The central character Desmond Thane (Nathaniel Parker) is a cold, young journalist who sneers at the phoney munism in Europe have implications for the future of Communism in Vietnam? 'What is happening is says Mr Lam. 'You can't hide it.

He reckons that the Vietnamese are open enough to recognise their mistakes and to rectify them. Mr Lam is rather evasive about the question of political control over Vietnamese television. He points out that the State-run station is directly accountable to Vietnam's parliament and has no intermediate supervisory body. But what are the political constraints? 'Everything is linked with politics. What is censorship depends on how you understand that he explains, avoiding the nub of the matter.

Under Vietnam's policies of dot moi, or renovation, the television station is given new freedom, but also has more respon Thursday 8.00-8.30 Greek Fire (Channel 4): Put Professor George Steiner in front of a TV camera and you know you have a series that is going to try and say everything about everything. These 10 'visual essays' look at the all-pervasive influence of ancient Greece on our culture. 'Why are we still building temples to muses the narrator, against a picture of the moon-shot. The gist is that if we are to know ourselves, we must not forget the Greek legacy. The commentary tends towards the flowery and aphoristic, and the visuals are a bit frantic, but it deserves an alpha for effort.

9.00-10.00 TECX (ITV): Suddenly, television drama has discovered Europe. In this new series Europe is a land of opportunity rich in crime, fraud and money. TECX is a private detective agency run by two dishy polyglots (Rob Spendlove and Urbano Barberini) and a stunning fashion-plate (Ulrike Schwarz). Their base is Brussels, but they can be in Amsterdam or any other European capital. Guest appearances by Jenny Agutter and (this week) Stephane Audran complete the well-manicured look.

This week's story is aboutmaritime insurance fraud and also stars Ronald Lacey, who is brilliant at playing nervous wrecks. 9.30-10.10 40 Minutes (BBC2): 'Many Happy Returns!" Nicola Wheater began talking about her previous existence when she was two. Piecing together her 'memories', she recalled a life as a little boy in the 1870s. Six-year-old Titu, living in Agra in northern India, claims that in his previous incarnation he was gunned down outside his radio shop and has a widow still living. Both stories are convincing, backed up by evidence, and send shivers down your spine.

Friday 1.50-3.50 Only Angels Have Wings (BBC1, film, 1939): Howard Hawks's masterly account of the laconic professionalism of American aviators running a broadcasts from the Soviet Union. The new channel is largely educational; its most popular programmes are those teaching foreign languages. The other channel carries children's programmes, news, documentaries and light entertainment, including some romantic Vietnamese stories adapted for television and given their first public airing since the Communist revolution. Mr Lam says that his station has been very open in covering the recent events in Eastern Europe: 'Our public is very interested in He says there was a particularly strong response to the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu. Does not the demise of Com something funny are not to Miller's satisfaction.

In his own attempt at an explanation, he talks us through a Dudley MoorePeter Cook sketch. Miller is one of the few people who could attempt this sort of exercise without being a bore. 10.05-12.10 Mrs Soffel (Channel 4, film, 1984): Gillian Armstrong's beautifully-crafted Hollywood debut centres on the astonishing true story of a late nineteeth-century prison warder's wife (Diane Keaton) revolting against her rigid husband by assisting the escape of two attractive condemned murderers (Mel Gibson, Matthew Modine). An unusual, challenging, undervalued film. pioneer airline in Latin America.

A deceptively casual surface conceals one of the great American films of the Thirties, though the acting of a flawless cast led by Cary Grant commands instant respect. 9.30-10.20 Arena (BBC2): 'Peggy and Her Vanessa Redgrave played playwrights' agent Peggy Ramsay in the film about Joe Orton, Prick Up Your Ears. Now in her eighties, Ramsay set up her agency in the mid-Fifties in a converted brothel off St Martin's Lane. Her clients are the luminaries of British theatre Robert Bolt, David Mercer, John Arden, David Hare, Caryl Churchill, Stephen Poliak-off and Christopher Hampton. She receives about 15 new scripts each week, and reads them all.

10.20-12.15 Tootsle (BBC1, film, 1982): Hilarious, humane, Tuesday File on Four (Radio 4, 9.20pm): Robin Lustig investigates the dubious future of the arts, increasingly dependent on flagging corporate donations. Repeated Wednesday, 4.05pm. Classic Albums Crosby, Stills and Nash (Radio 1, 7.30pm): More reminiscing with the late Roger Scott: this week the unmistakably late Sixties sound of N. A Matter of Soul (Radio 3, 9.55pm): Radio 3's Scandinavian Season is really getting into its stride, confounding the prejudices of even those with a sworn antipathy to sagas and Strind-berg. Film director Ingmar Bergman's fifth play, recently first broadcast by Swedish Radio, stars Anna Massey and promises a haunting portrait of a woman in 'psycho-sexual distress'.

Wednesday Jim Lloyd with Folk on 2 (Radio 2, 7pm): A programme to Nathaniel Parker and Suzanna Hamilton star In Never Come Back (9.25pm, Wednesday, BBC2). war, and remains impervious to the patriotic spirit. At a boxing match he meets a femme fatale (played by Suzanna Hamilton) with whom he anticipates 'a pure, free exchange of equals' mostly in bed. But her obsessive anonymity proves sinister, and there's murder in the air. First of three episodes.

9.40-10.10 QED (BBC1): 'What's So Funny About Jonathan Miller investigates those spasmodic respiratory convulsions called laughter. It is a reaction not entirely accessible to voluntary control. And it has taxed the minds of great thinkers like Freud and French philosopher Henri Bergson, whose theories about what makes tomorrow BBC Masterclass Young Musician oflhe flltrferclasses in association with triitigs without the racket III Lloyds Bank Tomorrow at 7.30 on BBC 2, Strings Masterclass. The last in the present series..