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Strength & Soap. News and public affairs, TV's one strong suit last year, is even stronger this fall. U.S. television cameras have thoroughly covered the world's major crises from Berlin's Wall to the U.N. reaction to Dag Hammarskjold's death. Adlai Stevenson has begun a highly effective series of Sunday afternoon talks on ABC. CBS Reports last week began its worthy three-part interview with Eisenhower (see THE NATION), and Commentator David Brinkley began sounding off on his own, opening his Journal with a mordant discussion that ranged from the U.S. outdoor billboard industry to British tabloid journalism.
Some of the more promising series and specials fell typically outside the usual categories. For Example. Alcoa Premiére began last week on ABC with an impressive dramatized study of group psychotherapy in the U.S. Navy (starring Arthur Kennedy). NBC's Theater '61, offering live productions of TV plays adapted from once popular movies, may sound like hybrid corn, but the first one, Robert Goldman's TV version of The Spiral Staircase, reminded viewers how good live television drama can be.
With other scattered and notable exceptions—such as Sir Laurence Olivier's appearance later this month in a two-hour version of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory—the season's early form leaves the impression that there is only one reason for anyone to turn on his TV set this fall: because it's there.