TV programs worth watching
Sun Nov 9 — Sat Nov 16

The producers of the excellent Changing Stages (ABC 
2.00pm Sundays) insist on cluttering it up with pretentious shots 
of the program's presenter, Richard Eyre, emerging from 
Underground stations or looking down on the West End from the 
roof of some theatre, when what you want is for Eyre to do what 
he's best at: talk about the history of the English theatre.

His grasp of the political history of the theatre is poor to non-
existent, but he has a good understanding of its aesthetic and 
social history, and the result is a very interesting series. And, 
as the episode with Arthur Miller talking about Laurence Olivier 
demonstrated, it is often quite amusing as well.

Lovingly restored footage from films made prior to WW1 graces 
this week's episode of Kevin Brownlow's Hollywood: A 
Celebration Of The American Silent Film (ABC 5.00pm Sundays).

The episode deals with the period from 1909 when New York's 
filmmakers moved to California to escape Thomas Edison's lawyers 
who claimed the other filmmakers were breaching Edison's patents. 
Edison's ploy ultimately failed, but by then filmmakers had 
discovered California's abundant sunshine and scenery.

Hollywood became the centre of US filmmaking. And when WW1 put a 
crimp in the European film industry, Hollywood's influence was 
strengthened.

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks set the social style of the 
"movie colony". They made a triumphant tour of Europe and 
received a lavish welcome in Moscow in the mid 'twenties.

Drama is defined as character in conflict. If the characters are 
rooted in reality, then they will reflect real issues and 
contradictions, real events and problems.

Some writers, however, are so earnest about dealing with some 
issue that they substitute the issues for the characters. 
Whatever the subject matter, such a work runs the risk of being 
merely worthy but failing as either art or entertainment.

Marking Time, John Doyle's four-part mini-series (ABC 
8.30pm over TWO nights — Sunday and Monday), runs this risk in 
my view.

Set in a small NSW town in February 2001, the program tries to 
encompass the erosion of the Olympic spirit of goodwill, the 
plight of refugees, racial intolerance, the effects of September 
11, and more.

Do Doyle, as writer, and director Cherie Nowlan, succeed? Or does 
the series deserve the damning epithet "worthy"? You decide.

Truth, War and Consequences, screening on Cutting Edge 
(SBS 8.00pm Tuesday) puts forward the truly bizarre concept: 
that the USA's current problems in Iraq are the result of lack of 
forward planning!

As SBS puts it, the program "takes viewers behind-the-scenes of a 
fierce internal debate between the State Department and the 
Pentagon over the shape of Iraq after the war. It was a debate, 
some officials and observers say, that bogged down America's pre-
war planning and distracted officials from the crucial business 
of post-war reconstruction."

Pardon me? I thought the crucial business for US planners was 
ensuring they got all of Iraq's oil, established a permanent 
military presence in the country in order to dominate the region, 
and stopped all Iraqi support for the Palestinians and any other 
independently-minded Arab regime.

"The 90-minute documentary features interviews with key 
government officials and military leaders who admit to being 
unprepared for the lawlessness and devastation-both physical and 
economic-that greeted them upon their arrival in Baghdad.

"Paul Bremer, the chief civilian administrator overseeing Iraq's 
reconstruction, says: 'I think it is clear that when we got here 
we did not realise how devastated the economy was'".

How strange. The rest of the world knew what ten years of 
continuous US and British air raids and economic sanctions had 
done to the country's economy and infrastructure. But the US did 
not know?

The program even claims the US forces were unprepared for the 
widespread looting. Yet well-documented evidence, from Western 
journalists in Baghdad, shows that US forces actually invited the 
people to loot the country's museums and ministries.

The program's producer (and correspondent), Martin Smith, says 
naively: "The failure, thus far, to find evidence of weapons of 
mass destruction raises troubling questions about what else the 
Bush administration may have misunderstood or misjudged as it 
planned for the war and the occupation". Oh, Martin, get real!

For reasons passing all understanding, the ABC have decided to 
run two very different sitcoms, with very different styles and 
appealing to two different audiences, back to back on the same 
night. I happen to like both of them, but I don't think I would 
like to see them back to back!

The first one up is the new series of superhero spoof My Hero 
(ABC 8.30pm Thursdays), starring Ardal O'Hanlon (the younger, 
even thicker, priest from Father Ted) as Thermoman, strange 
visitor from the planet Ultron. When he's not being a superhero, 
Thermoman runs a health food store and enjoys married life with a 
nurse from earth named Janet.

It is an old fashioned, conventional, even mild sit com. O'Hanlon 
is the best thing in it.

It will be followed by Rik Mayall as the over-the-top "Quadruple 
Professor" Adonis Cnut (or "you poor misprint" as a character 
calls him in one episode) in the anarchic, cynical and sex-
obsessed Believe Nothing (ABC 9.00pm Thursdays).

This week, for reasons too devious to explore, Cnut persuades 
Tony Blair to invade Cuba and George Bush not to. The depiction 
of Bush is priceless.

When We Were Kings (ABC 11.20pm Thursday) is the acclaimed 
film of the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the 
Jungle" in Kinshasa, Zaire.

Completed some twenty-two years after the actual title fight, the 
film won the 1996 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Along with 
highlights of underdog Ali's stunning victory and infamous "Rope-
A-Dope" tactics, this richly textured film also covers the back-
ground to the event and its cultural significance, including 
footage of Ali's goodwill tours.

The BBC and the ABC once had sufficient integrity of purpose and 
standards of excellence that precluded the screening of things 
like Living Famously (ABC 7.30pm Saturdays), a series 
"profiling the lives of 25 screen and music icons".

The series, we are told, "is an affectionate look at the 
personal, rather than the professional, lives of these legends". 
In other words, tabloid television. And there's 25 of them!

Starting this week we have new episodes of the period (1940s — 
50s) detective series A Nero Wolfe Mystery, beginning with 
Murder Is Corny (ABC 9.30pm Saturdays).

Rex Stout's sleuth Nero Wolf, despite his excessive weight ("a 
seventh of a ton"), his gourmet appetite and his self-absorption, 
is rather a bore.

Maury Chaykin plays him woodenly, although his girth and 
behaviour have both been toned down. The actual star of the show 
is however Timothy Hutton who plays Wolfe's accolyte and 
assistant Archie Goodwin.

Once again Toronto stands in for New York in the postwar decade. 
The series doesn't look like the 'forties, but does look like the 
films of the 'forties, snarling cops and all.