National TV programs worth watching
Sunday Nov 16 — Saturday Nov 22

Arthur Conan Doyle's classic boys' adventure The Lost World 
(ABC 8.30pm Sunday) is, as the British Express says, "an 
absolutely ripping yarn". The arrogant Professor Challenger 
claims to have seen living dinosaurs on a high, isolated plateau 
in the Amazon jungle.

A titled adventurer and a headline-hunting newspaper agree to 
outfit an expedition to find out if Challenger's story has any 
truth in it.

After many adventures in the Lost World with dinosaurs, ape-men 
and Indians, the explorers return with a captive pterosaur which 
unfortunately escapes when being shown to the scientific world 
for the first time.

This repeat of the 2001 TV production, features an excellent cast 
that includes Bob Hoskins as Professor Challenger, James Fox as 
the initially sceptical Professor Summerlee, Tom Ward as the man-
of-action Lord John Roxton, and Matthew Rhys as the unheroic 
newspaperman Edward Malone.

It was a co-production between the BBC and the US cable channel 
the Arts & Entertainment Network. The US connection probably 
explains the introduction into the script of two new and 
unnecessary characters: Peter Falk as a fundamentalist American 
religious fanatic, the Reverend Theo Kerr, and Elaine Cassidy as 
his niece, Agnes Cluny.

The location shooting in New Zealand is a treat and the Walking 
With Dinosaurs team splendidly creates and integrates the various 
Iguanadons, Allosaurs and Pterosaurs the adventurer's encounter. 
The several attacks and pursuits — especially that on the Indian 
village by two huge Allosaurs — are particularly well done and 
quite exciting.

Among the documentaries of interest this week are the new series 
Jimmy Carter (ABC 8.30pm Mondays), which should be 
interesting if not terribly deep (it's made by WGBH, the Boston 
public broadcasting station); and Islander in A Big 
Country Revisited (ABC 8.00pm Tuesday), which deals with the 
continuing struggle of the Torres Strait Islander people for land 
rights (or in their terms, island rights).

American film director Martin Scorsese has made cogent 
contributions to a number of documentaries on the cinema, 
including his own three-part series in 1997's spate of 
documentaries commemorating the centenary of cinema.

In the new five-part documentary series Martin Scorsese: My 
Voyage to Italy (SBS 7.30pm Tuesdays) Scorsese takes us on a 
very personal journey through Italian cinema history.

The series looks at those Italian films that had a deep impact on 
Scorsese over the years, in the process also examining his own 
formation as a filmmaker and as a person.

The series begins with the very first Italian films Scorsese saw 
as a child, with his family: the groundbreaking Neo-realist 
pictures made by Rossellini, De Sica and Visconti. They not only 
opened up a whole new world for Scorsese when he was a boy — 
they also gave him a glimpse of his own origins.

As Italian cinema evolved after the Second World War, so did the 
future filmmaker, as he watched and absorbed the bold, 
increasingly experimental work of these and other directors. 
Among the films examined are Pais`, Umberto D, 
Ossessione, Fabiola, I Vitelloni, Voyage 
to Italy, Senso, L' Avventura and 8=.

During the run of Martin Scorsese: My Voyage to Italy, SBS 
Television will screen films by the featured filmmakers in the 
Cinema Classic timeslot, presented by David Stratton. The first 
film is Divorce Italian Style (SBS 11.35pm Sunday), a 
cynical, even caustic, attack on Italy's lack of divorce laws by 
left-wing director by Pietro Germi.

In Chasing The Sleeper Cell on Cutting Edge (SBS 
8.30pm Tuesday), the PBS Frontline program and The New 
York Times join forces with the White House to unashamedly 
"fight terrorism", in the form of the "Lackawanna Six", an 
alleged Al Qaida-trained "sleeper cell" of American terrorists.

If the program sounds like a mixture of White House propaganda 
and intelligence service disinformation, that's because it is.

I won't be giving any secrets away, even to those few Guardian 
readers who still watch The Bill (ABC 8.30pm Tuesday 
and Saturday), if I tell you that Seargeant Mathew Boyden gets 
killed off this week. Also killed off is the Tuesday night 
screening of The Bill.

Boyden's murder will not be investigated on future episodes of 
The Bill, either. That is the task of a new series that 
will replace the long running cop show on Tuesdays from next 
week: Murder Investigation Team.

It comes from the same stable as The Bill, and characters 
from that show appear in the first episode of the new show, 
presumably to help get it established with the same audience.

The makers of The Bill, sensing audience disquiet at the 
descent of the series into soap opera, recently got themselves a 
new producer of some talent, but they have since sacked him for 
trying to dump the soap opera in favour of concentrating on 
police work.

It seems, the soap opera stuff gets ratings and that's what 
counts with the company that makes the series.

The largest film industry in the world is not Hollywood but the 
Indian cinema. The mainstream Indian film industry, largely based 
in Bombay and known derisively as "Bollywood", confirms that 
quantity does not equate with quality.

On the other hand, India has also produced a splendid alternative 
cinema of great power and beauty. Sadly, successive governments 
have allowed this alternative cinema to be overwhelmed by the 
crass commercialism of the mainstream industry

The Indian cinema is one of seven national cinemas that are 
examined in the Canadian series Cinemas of the World (SBS 
8.30pm Wednesdays). The others are those of Denmark, Spain, Hong 
Kong (third biggest film producer in the world, believe it or 
not), China, Japan and Brazil.

Major cinemas that are missing are those of Iran, Francophone 
Africa and Eastern Europe.

Each episode, we are told, "delves into the unique and magical 
styles of cinema" in the country being studied.

You might like to take a look at Reverend Sun Myung Moon: Emperor 
Of The Universe (ABC 11.00pm Wednesday), which details the 
life and extraordinary times of the self-proclaimed "Messiah of 
all Mankind" and founder of the Moonies cult.

Jailed for tax evasion and prohibited from entering the UK, Moon, 
the billionnaire owner of The New York Post, among other 
things, has been accused of everything from involvement with the 
Korean CIA to megalomania.

To his friends, including George Bush Snr and Sir Edward Heath, 
he is a hero: a man of profound spirituality who strives to 
vanquish Satan and Communism.

The two-part report on Dinosaur Dealers (SBS 8.30pm 
Fridays) confirms that capitalists will commodify anything, even 
old bones, and that if you try to stop their exploiting of that 
commodity they will resort to crime to get around your 
"interference".