TV programs worth watching
Sun June 13 — Sat June 19

This week's instalment of Seven Wonders Of The Industrial 
World (ABC 7.30pm Sundays) concerns the building of the Bell 
Rock Lighthouse.

The Bell Rock, also known as Inchcape Rock, is the subject of the 
famous ballad by Robert Southey. A reef of sandstone rocks in the 
North Sea some 11 miles off the Scottish coast, at high tide it 
lies some four metres below the surface.

In a storm in December 1799, 70 vessels foundered on the reef or 
on the rocky shore trying to avoid the reef. In 1807, following 
the loss on the reef of a 64-gun Naval ship with all hands (some 
500 men), the government aurthorised the construction of a 
lighthouse.

This program recounts the arduous story of its construction by 
men who could only work on the rock at low tide in good weather 
(a total of only 80 hours in their first year).

Nevertheless, by 1811 it was built and still stands today. Not a 
ship has been lost on the Rock since.

The program focuses on Robert Stevenson, the engineer who 
conceived the idea of building a lighthouse on the exposed rock 
and was largely responsible for its construction. Stevenson, the 
grandfather of writer Robert Louis Stevenson, would eventually 
build 23 lighthouses as well as being a consulting engineer on 
railways, canals, tunnels and bridges.

This week's Stanley Kubrick movie on SBS is his imaginative sci-
fi epic 2001: A Spacey Odyssey (SBS 9.30pm Sunday). Based 
on Arthur C Clarke' typically unscientific short story The 
Sentinal, it was nevertheless for most of its length (daft ending 
aside) eminently watchable when it first came out almost 40 years 
ago.

I'm afraid Kubrick's ground-breaking visionary imagery will seem 
mundane today, and decidedly unimpressive on the small screen at 
home.

From the Heart, billed as "intimate stories of Australia 
and New Guinea told by those who have lived there", returns this 
week in the Reality Bites slot (ABC 8.00pm Tuesdays) with 
another four stories from our region.

The first episode, Kimberley, uses the eyes and 
reminiscences of two friends we met in the last series of From 
The Heart, Ian Morris and Joe Ross, to explore the Kimberley 
region from the magnificent beehive formations of The Bungle 
Bungles, to the mighty Fitzroy River. Morris is a Top End 
naturalist and Ross is an Aboriginal activist whose Bunuba people 
come from the limestone country west of Fitzroy Crossing.

In extraordinary and very beautiful images, we see the region 
during the monsoonal storms and the floods that turn towns into 
islands, and go on the wild canoe trip that helped save the 
Fitzroy River. Joe and Ian remember the tales of lost boys and 
stranded German aviators who were saved by the Aborigines.

Directed by Pino Amenta, perhaps the most extraordinary thing 
about this excellent yet very personal look at an exotic part of 
our country, is that it was produced by the Australian Children's 
Television Foundation.

September 11, 2001, initiated a bonanza for the US defence and 
surveillance industries. In just over a week, the CIA, FBI and 
other defence and intelligence agencies produced a list of 150 
technologies that could be fast-tracked and used in the "war 
against terrorism".

They included ultra-sensitive airport bomb detectors, electronic 
translators for soldiers, 3-D face recognition and information 
management systems to track terrorists, and the thermogaric bomb.

Twelve times more destructive than conventional explosives, the 
thermogaric bomb detonates forward, penetrating bunkers and 
caves. It went from laboratory to battlefield in just 90 days.

In the first part of the two-part Cutting Edge documentary 
The Perfect War (SBS 8.30pm Tuesdays), producers of 
military and intelligence technology explain how their phones 
constantly rang after September 11, with US government officials 
requesting access to their research and latest developments.

The program discusses the ethical questions raised by the use of 
these new technologies, the chinks in the technological armour, 
American hegemony, other potential future weaponry, and the 
effects in international relations.

One of the experts who speak in the program is Vice Admiral 
Arthur Cebrowsky, Director of something with the intriguing name 
US Office of Foreign Transformation. Now what do you reckon that 
actually means?

There is no doubt that Al-Qaeda exists as a terrorist 
organisation. The question that exercises the mind of progressive 
people is whether the US is Al-Qaeda's bitter foe, its undeclared 
ally or its creator.

Or is the answer a combination of all three, depending on place 
and circumstance?

You won't find out from the documentary series The Third World 
War: Al-Qaeda, screening on The Big Picture (ABC 
8.30pm Wednesdays). As the title indicates, this series takes the 
"sworn enemy" approach, adopting the US posture that we are 
involved in a "third world war", of civilisation versus 
terrorism.

The series is meticulous in its examination of the pursuit of 
small terrorist cells, its global focus, its concentration on the 
tactic of terrorism as though it was an actual movement in 
itself.

Overall, it serves the interests of the US and other imperialist 
governments. Rather like Al-Qaeda itself, really.

After ten minutes of Dame Edna Lives At The Palace! (ABC 
8.30pm Thursday), during which I didn't crack a smile, I gave up. 
Barrie Humphreys is — or, at least, was — a gifted comedian, 
but this was just dull.

I found the final episode of the crime thriller Amnesia 
(ABC 8.30pm Friday) unsatisfying. The explanation for Lucia's 
mysterious appearances and disappearances, as well as the fate of 
the killer, seem to cheat the audience.

And what is the significance of the last scene with John Hannah, 
which fades to white to avoid a resolution?

Still, it had a good cast and if it becomes a series, I'll watch 
it.