TV programs worth watching
Sun April 11 — Sat April 17

Programs about music can be good, or brilliant or frightfully 
tedious. The two-part series The Art Of Violin (ABC 2.00pm 
Sundays) is probably in the second category. Certainly it is 
fascinating and (for the non-musician) informative.

All sorts of famous performers are to be seen — and heard — 
from Jascha Heifetz to Hilary Hahn. In the first episode, The 
Devil's Instrument, as well as marvellous old television 
performances preserved on film, there are some from actual 
Hollywood films (with infinitely superior lighting).

Watch Heifetz' fingering on the Tchaikovsky Concerto in D Major 
as filmed by Hollywood: his left hand seems to have a life of its 
own, somehow miraculously independent from the rest of him.

Intercut with the actual performances are fascinating comments 
(including first hand accounts) on the techniques and methods of 
a wide range of performers by Itzhak Perlman, Ida Haendel and 
Ivry Gitlis.

I found 22-year-old Hilary Hahn's comments very interesting — 
brilliant in her own right, her observations are basic, down to 
earth, the comments of an unassuming, working professional.

I do not possess an encyclopaedia of music, and clearly this is a 
defficiency that will have to be remedied, for none of my other 
reference works list the Chevalier de Saint-George.

And yet, according to Le Mozart Noir: Reviving A Legend 
(ABC 3.00pm Sunday), he was an extraordinary 18th century 
violinist and composer whose work enraptured the French and 
inspired Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven.

He was also Black, the son of a slave mother. A luminary in 18th 
century France, he was renowned as an athlete, revolutionary and 
virtuoso musician, and went on to lead an army of 1000 black 
soldiers into battle.

Yet today he is virtually unknown. Intriguing.

In the Middle Ages, credulity, religious fervour and poverty 
combined to produce a brisk trade in religious relics. 
Enterprising folk who were fed up with being poor found they 
could obtain food and lodging in return for an old nail, 
providing they said they had acquired the nail in the Holy Land 
and that it was one of the nails used to crucify Jesus.

There were enough bits of Noah's ark allegedly bobbing around in 
the Middle Ages to make up a small navy. The reverence afforded 
the more substantial of these Medieval fakes has been a great 
boon to the church over the years and the Vatican is 
understandably loath to expose them to scientific examination.

If you are a biblical scholar, proving that some old piece of 
wood or cloth is not part of "the true cross" or of Noah's ark or 
Christ's burial shroud will only get you a small mention in the 
papers.

On the other hand, asserting that after careful study you are 
satisfied that it is genuine will get you a TV documentary aired 
wherever there are Christians, your name in the papers, probably 
a book and certainly assure you a very valuable place on the 
lecture circuit.

Which brings us to the piece of wood preserved in the Roman 
Church of Santa Croce as the Titulus Crucis, or the headboard of 
the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

Most scientists are satisfied the "relic" is a Medieval fake, but 
Professor Carston Thiede, an "expert in biblical texts", claims 
it is genuine. And so we have the obligatory television 
documentary, Quest For The True Cross, screening on Lost 
Worlds (SBS 8.30pm Sunday).

No doubt, for Professor Thiede, a welcome stint on the lecture 
circuit follows.

This week's success guru on Reality Bites: Selling Success! 
(ABC 8.00pm Tuesdays) is Brendan Nichols, who seems to have 
hit on a brilliant formula: he combines the usual seminars on 
"how to be a success and make lots of money" with the ever-
popular Eastern religions gig.

The combination of real estate marketing and Indian philosophy 
has obviously worked for Brendan and still is, apparently. As the 
ABC says in its notes about this program, "We follow a couple of 
students, Kelly O'Connor and Ylia Linnet, who end up spending 
many thousands of dollars with Brendan in their quest for 
personal peace and greater profits".

Couldn't have put it more succinctly myself.

The 1960s' Japanese animated series Astroboy is one of the 
most fondly remembered of that band of naove robot-versus-
monsters cartoons. All the characters had determinedly European 
faces, the music was trite but it stuck in the memory, and the 
animation was shall we say basic.

But Astroboy's adventure's were rather fun, and the robot-
boy was a surprisingly complex character.

I suppose it was inevitable, given the way other old shows have 
reappeared in new guises, that a new series of Astroboy 
would also appear (ABC 5.25pm Thursdays).

The new series has more razzle dazzle in the artwork (the 
animation work is done in Beijing, I notice) but the characters 
and plots deliberately echo the style of the '60s series. What 
seems to be missing is the naoveti. And with it the charm.

Not all religious relics are made of wood, or cloth or rusty 
iron. In the four-part thriller The Hunt For The Hidden Relic 
(SBS 8.30pm Fridays) the relic is a video camera, property of 
a long-dead time traveller, that may have filmed Jesus Christ.

Bit contrived, but what can you expect from a German-made rip off 
of the Indiana Jones films?

The series is based on Andreas Eschbach's "international best 
seller" Jesus Video. Budgeted at four and a half million 
Euros, it has a wonderfully ersatz "authenticity": it was partly 
shot on the sets from The Bible series.

At last, the ABC has a new series of Taggart, British TV's 
longest running detective drama (ABC 8.30pm Fridays). Blythe 
Duff, who has played Glasgow police detective Jackie Reid since 
the series began all those years ago, now gets top billing. And 
frankly she deserves it.

An actress with a face that is interesting rather than beautiful, 
she has been the mainstay of many an episode in the past. She is 
ably assisted by Alex Norton as the gruff DCI Matt Burke, and 
John Mackie as DI Robbie Ross and Colin McCredie as DC Stuart 
Fraser.

Written by Rob Fraser and directed by Patrick Harkins, this first 
episode of the new series is an above-average "police 
procedural", with unfamiliar scenery and, of course, colourful 
accents.