TV programs worth watching
Sun October 19 — Sat October 25

I have not seen the eight-part drama series Napoleon 
(SBS 7.30pm Sundays) but some idea of the line it takes can 
be gleaned from the write up provided by SBS: "He stirred 
nationalism, promoted Liberalism and envisioned a Europe united 
under one law and one rule.

"Napoleon Bonaparte lived his life by his motto 'everything for 
the French people'". That's why he invited them all to come and 
live with him in his palace, I suppose.

Actually, of course, he didn't do that. What he did do was to 
betray the Revolution he was charged with protecting and make 
himself Emperor, replacing the rule of the French people he so 
revered with his own dictatorial rule.

In the process he gave his name to the tendency of some military 
leaders to want to become the political leaders as well, usually 
leading a coup against popular rule. It's called a Napoleonic 
tendency, and the term is not a compliment.

If you allow for the bias, this could still be an impressive 
series: It has an impressive cast including Christian Clavier as 
Napoleon, Isabella Rossellini as Josephine, Gerard Depardieu and 
John Malkovich.

Suitably lavish, it features authentic battle reconstructions, 
extracts from diaries, letters and memoirs, maps and rare images 
to help document the rise and fall of this extraordinary life.

Napoleon figures prominently in another program this week, the 
first episode of the five part series Meet the Ancestors (SBS 
8.30pm Sundays). Like previous programs under this title, the new 
series deals with archeological excavations of the relatively 
recent past.

In the first episode, Napoleon's Lost Army, the first ever 
mass grave of Napoleon's Grand Army is unearthed by building 
workers on the outskirts of Vilnius, Lithuania in 2002. The grave 
is found to contain French soldiers who perished on the retreat 
from Moscow in 1812, dead not from battle, but as a result of 
cold, starvation, exhaustion and the arrogance of Napoleon.

The German entertainment world's infatuation with cross-dressing, 
which influenced the performances of Marlene Dietrich in the 
films of Josef Von Sternberg for example, received one of its 
most explicit workouts in the 1934 musical comedy Viktor Und 
Viktoria, the story of a young actress who does not find success 
until she pretends to be a man impersonating a woman. The 
original, which has rhymed dialogue, was screened on SBS a few 
years ago.

The year after it appeared, the Gaumont Studio in Britain remade 
it as a vehicle for Jessie Matthews, under the title First A Girl 
(ABC 4.30am Monday). Nothing risqui or suggestive was 
permitted, however.

The cleaned up adaptation is generally described with words like 
"slight" or "innocuous".

If you have not yet caught one of the episodes of the real life 
casualty ward documentary series Trauma: Life In The E.R. 
(ABC 10.55pm Wednesdays) you should make the effort. Each one 
is set in the Emergency Room of a different US hospital.

Video journalists work shoulder to shoulder with the men and 
women on the hospital staff, giving you a very genuine look at 
the triumphs and tragedies, pain and despair and joy and relief 
that makes up a shift in the ER.

It makes all those hospital dramas look so very tame. This week's 
episode, Going The Distance is set in Albuquerque.

The unsucessful private eye series Hawkins returns this week (ABC 
11.25pm Thursdays). Robert Lindsay and Elizabeth McGovern star, 
but the problem is not the cast, or even the plots. It's the 
silly basic contrivance of the situation.

Luke Hawkins is a disaffected philosophy lecturer, "who by night 
leads a double life as a private investigator". He keeps this 
secret from all who know him, including his wife (McGovern).

What kind of private investigator can function in secret, let 
alone mainly at night? Why was the series saddled with such a 
restrictive concept anyway? It is so unnecessary and makes the 
plotting overly contrived.

This week's Friday Night Drama (SBS 8.30pm Fridays) is Roy 
Hvllsdotter Live. It's about a successful stand-up comic in 
Melbourne whose life and career start to unravel when his 
girlfriend Cate dumps him.

Even Roy's best mate Simmo starts to think Roy is turning into a 
"weirdo stalker" when he takes to waiting for Cate every night in 
a rundown souvlaki bar — to photograph her as she drives past.

The material sounds a little thin, more like something that 
should affect the plot of a movie rather than be the plot. 
Nevertheless, writer/director Matthew Saville won an AWGIE 
(Australian Writers' Guild Award) for Best Original Screenplay 
for this drama.

The cast is headed by Darren Casey as Roy, Luke Elliott as Simmo, 
Asher Keddie as Cate and John Clarke as the boss of the Comedy 
Club where Roy performs.

Ever since her performance as a monocle-toting gold-digging 
chorus girl in Golddiggers of 1933, Ginger Rogers had been 
adept at portraying no-nonsense working class girls. In the late 
'thirties and early 'forties she was obviously part of 
Hollywood's left wing crowd.

In the spritely 1941 RKO comedy Tom, Dick And Harry (ABC 
2.00pm Saturday), she plays a young woman wooed by three beau, 
who can't make up her mind which to choose. In the end she turns 
down money in favour of sticking with the working class.

Directed by Garson Kanin from an Oscar-nominated script by Paul 
Jarrico, the film was described by Otis Ferguson, critic for the 
New Republic as "foot by foot, the best made picture of this 
year".

Dorothy Arzner was the most successful woman director Hollywood 
ever had, but that doesn't say all that much, because Hollywood 
didn't exactly encourage women directors.

After editing the bullfight sequence in Valentino's Blood And 
Sand, she moved on to become an established director of films 
with major stars. But although she was perfectly capable of 
handling any type of film, the moguls of Hollywood (all male) 
seemed to think she would be best suited directing "women's 
pictures".

After a couple of decades of that she went into teaching and 
became an academic at USC. This week's Katharine Hepburn film 
Christopher Strong (ABC 10.20pm Saturday) was Arzner's 
twelfth film, and only Hepburn's second.

Under Arzner's skilled direction Hepburn gives, in the words of 
the American Film Institute in 1977, "an intriguing, 
individualistic performance as a headstrong aviatrix in love with 
a married man".

Her co-stars are Colin Clive and Billie Burke (Glinda, the Good 
Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz).