Eye to Eye

Tonight the Eye to Eye Documentary team has a look at life in this country as it strikes a newcomer to these shores.

Tonight 'Eye to Eye' focuses on crime in Birmingham. You will meet real characters from the underworld who have been operating outside the law. They will tell you how they work and how they are caught, and you will see how the police act in the endless war against crime.

Tonight Eye to Eye tells the story of the medical officers of the Port of London Health Authority who stand on guard as the first line of defence against infectious disease. A ship from Asia is heading for the Channel; one of the passengers is sick; 'query smallpox' is the message sent by the ship's surgeon; in thirty-six hours they will be in London, the capital of a country of fifty million people, only a quarter of whom are vaccinated.

The Plight of the Illegitimate is examined with the cooperation of some of those who can speak authoritatively on the effect on the individual of being born out of wedlock. Every incident is based on an actual case history, but where it is necessary to preserve the anonymity of unmarried mothers and their children the faces seen are not those of the real people.

'Eye to Eye' looks at a provincial city from evening until dawn, and meets some of the people caught up in the restlessness and loneliness of the city night. Made by the BBC North Region Film Unit

Tonight 'Eye to Eye' spans the Atlantic, and a musician who has lived in both cities interprets the scenes recorded by our cameras in streets 3,500 miles apart. Photographed in New York by Dick Bagley and in London by Charles Parnell. Piano accompaniment by Tom McCall