TV programs worth watching
Sun May 16 — Sat May 22

Ostensibly a program about the construction by slave labour of 
the infamous 260-mile Burma railway as "the greatest engineering 
project of the Second World War", the misleadingly-named 
documentary The Bridge On The River Kwai (ABC 7.30pm 
Sunday) is actually a telling exposi of the horror of its 
construction.

One hundred thousand Allied POWs died of starvation, overwork, 
beatings and sadism. The program also reveals that 90,000 Asian 
labourers — Tamils, Burmese and others — also died from similar 
causes.

The Asian dead are largely ignored in Western accounts of the 
Burma railway. And, as the program shows, Japanese accounts 
including even the memories of those who were in charge still 
blame the deaths on cholera or deny them altogether.

This is a moving documentary that builds slowly as it follows a 
railway engineer from Britain who comes to examine the railway's 
engineering aspects and ends by being shaken to the core by the 
immensity of the killing encompassed in its construction. "It's 
like the Holocaust", he says at one point.

100 Per Cent White, screening on Compass (ABC 
10.10pm Sunday), won the 2001 BAFTA (British Academy of Film & 
Television Arts) Flaherty Prize for Best Documentary. It is a 
study of three lumpen proletarian, racist skinheads, who were 
filmed originally ten years ago, and comparing their situation 
today.

The BAFTA judges agreed, "this multi-dimensional film gives an 
outstanding portrayal of the way the main characters' lives had 
changed over the 10-year period. It was possible to empathise 
with aspects of their lives while retaining a sense of outrage 
and horror at their beliefs."

It is interesting material, but provides no real insights into 
the root causes of the racism and especially the anger that 
permeates their lives and their thinking. Least of all does its 
outraged middle class attitude concede that there are powerful 
social forces for whom people like Colin, Neil and Nick are very 
useful.

Cecilia And Bryn At Glyndebourne (ABC 11.55pm Sunday), in 
which Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel join forces at Glyndebourne 
Opera House with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by 
Myung Whun Chung in an evening of arias and duets by Mozart, 
Rossini and Haydn, is doubtless very beautiful.

But at five minutes to midnight? In any case, surely this is a 
program that belongs on radio rather than a visual medium like 
television. It sounds just the thing to listen to (not watch) 
while straightening out your video collection or even writing 
Worth Watching.

Cutting Edge: Why Planes Fall (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday) claims 
that 70 percent of airplane crashes are the result of human 
error. After a piece of propaganda to convince us that none of 
the Boeing company's products could possibly be faulty when they 
leave the factory, the rest of the program is a report on the 
latest US methods of overcoming "human failure".

All United Airlines pilots for example have to take courses in 
coping with conflict, including relational problems in the 
cockpit. Co-pilots are specially trained in behavioural 
psychology techniques to be able to contest their captain's 
decisions.

Pilots it seems have to be taught not to be overconfident, not to 
think that their raft of on-board computers somehow make their 
planes invulnerable.

Considering the frequency of US airline accidents, I did not find 
the program nearly as comforting as the makers intended.

The crew and passengers of the Titanic thought she was 
invulnerable (or at least unsinkable), and found out the hard way 
that it was just wishful thinking. Those who went into the water 
wearing life jackets did not drown: they died of cold, and their 
bodies bobbed around in the water until a ship sent out from 
Halifax in Nova Scotia for the purpose came and retrieved them.

Titanic's Ghosts (ABC 9.30pm Wednesday) recreates that 
gruesome search and the burial of bodies both at sea and in 
Halifax. The sailors themselves paid for a memorial to be erected 
for one of the anonymous bodies, a toddler identified only as 
"the unknown child".

The program follows the attempts of some scientists and forensic 
experts on behalf of relatives of people who died in the disaster 
to determine the identity of just three of the bodies buried in 
Halifax cemetery, including "the unknown child".

It's a fascinating detective story and an emotional one, with an 
unexpected outcome.

Readers of this paper should find Sisters In The Black 
Movement, a special half hour Message Stick (ABC 
6.00pm Friday), of considerable interest, especially in the light 
of Howard's recent attacks on ATSIC and the position of 
Aborigines.

The program talks to the women who were a part of the movement 
leading up to the 1967 referendum in which 90 percent of 
Australians voted to include Aboriginal people in the census, and 
to allocate Commonwealth funding towards Aboriginal and Torres 
Strait Islander peoples.

They are still dynamic and committed and active. A pleasure to 
watch and to listen to.

In its headlong rush to the bottom, the ABC has steadily 
abandoned the concept of the pursuit of excellence or television 
as a means of raising the cultural level of the people.

Increasingly, Australia's national public broadcaster looks like 
a provincial commercial station, catering to the lowest common 
denominator in a desperate bid for ratings at minimum expense. 
Rather like Channel Ten, really.

How otherwise to explain something as inept and amateurish as 
Double The Fist (ABC 11:30pm Fridays)? Only fitfully 
amusing, it is aimed at people who think it's terribly funny to 
persuade a young girl to eat five jars of mayonnaise for $50.