An English Autumn

An English Autumn An English autumn? In one of those hollow moments before the picture comes up I thought I heard a voice say: "An English autumn, a prelude to winter, a reminder of a new season of drama on BBC-2". Driving down, later, through the heather and gorse of a Welsh autumn, I wondered if the English Broadcasting Corporation had meant the announcement as a promise or a warning. But the set I had access to didn't get BBC-2, and whenever that is the case the television world shrinks. Most of what I saw on BBC-l suggested images of recurrence, though Barlow of Softly, Softly was on special duties in a sort of Wales: coal and coast, weak and corrupt local police, a homosexual borough surveyor, and Islwyn and Ceirwen the young nationalists who had been after the English road-signs and were hinting at worse. Hint, glare, suggestion, scenery, aggression, complication: it's quite slick, going down-it's only later you realise what you've swallowed. Mind you, though, the source of the corruption was an Englishman.