You Missed Something Great On TV (But You’ll Get Another Chance to See It) (February/March 1986 | Volume: 37, Issue: 2)

You Missed Something Great On TV (But You’ll Get Another Chance to See It)

AH article image

Authors: James H. Hutson

Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

Historic Theme:

Subject:

February/March 1986 | Volume 37, Issue 2

What is the connection between India and the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787? A connoisseur of constitutional trivia would answer, “Warren Hastings,” explaining that an account of the impeachment of Hastings in 1787 by the House of Commons for plundering India came to the framers’ attention late in their proceedings and offered guidance for their own impeachment clauses. Warren Hastings, however, is not the appropriate answer. The connection between India and the convention is that both have recently been the subjects of widely acclaimed, though very different, television series, one of which has persuaded many observers that Americans have, at last, attained the proficiency of the British in using television to present historical events.

But, unlike The Jewel in the Crown, a tumultuous historical drama of war and de-colonization, The Constitution: That Delicate Balance is an oversized panel show, an hour’s conversation among 20 citizens in business suits unrelieved by murders, police chases, or seductions. It is, in other words, what the media disdainfully call “talking heads.” And the heads talk about a “heavy” topic, the Constitution, which, according to conventional wisdom, empties a hall faster than a sweep by the A-Team. And yet the series produces electricity, tension, humor, and stimulation, has secured the allegiance of a large audience, and has obtained the patronage of more than two hundred colleges, which are using it as a “telecourse.” Why does it succeed?

It succeeds, first, because of the skill of its director, Fred W. Friendly, a former president of CBS News, whose experience in producing good television dates back to a partnership with Edward R. Murrow in the early 1950s. Second, the programs focus on constitutional topics of current interest and, in many cases, ones that cause anguish. Bankruptcy and the regulation of commerce are out; abortion, school prayer, affirmative action and reverse discrimination, gun control, the right to die, the war powers act, the insanity defense, and the rights and responsibilities of the press are in. Third, the participants in each show are celebrities—principally lawyers, judges, politicians, and journalists—whose presence generates interest. Among those in the first show, for example, are Gerald Ford, Edmund Muskie, the presidential counselors Brent Scowcroft and Philip Buchen, the Watergate adversaries Archibald Cox and James St. Clair, and the columnist Tom Wicker. All are adversarial and authoritative. The viewer is confident, for example, that, when Dan Rather and former CIA director James Schlesinger speak on the media’s publication of confidential government documents, he should listen.

Finally, the series succeeds because of its distinctive format, conceived by Friendly during the 1970s for his Media and Society Seminars while he was a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Each episode is presented as a hypothetical legal case in which the participants assume various roles. The cases are moderated by accomplished law school professors who employ the Socratic method, often to the exquisite discomfort of the celebrities. What viewer would not enjoy seeing prominent judges