TV programs worth watching
Sun 11 July — Sat 17 July

As far as Worth Watching is concerned, the week begins 
and ends with detectives reviewing an old case. First up is 
another in the Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot series, 
Five Little Pigs (ABC 8.30pm Sunday), in which Miss 
Christie's literary sleuth is asked in 1939 to look into the case 
of Caroline Crale who was hanged in 1925 for the murder of her 
husband.

The murdered man is described as a "Bohemian artist", but not the 
starve-in-a-garret type. This "Bohemian" has a housekeeper and a 
very large house with room for lots of house-guests for the 
weekend.

This society milieu allows plenty of scope for Miss Christie's 
devious plotting, and for Poirot to exercise his little grey 
cells. Although part of the solution sticks out a mile, Miss 
Christie as usual adds extra twists.

This is a superior series of movie-length adaptations, marked by 
excellent period dicor and atmospheric photography. David Suchet, 
who has been playing Poirot for 15 years now, has grown into the 
role, although he does not bring out the necessary iron beneath 
the detective's fussy, mannered exterior.

Television is a very powerful medium. It reaches millions of 
people and conveys information with a stunning appearance of 
reality and veracity.

It is capable of being an unparalleled educational tool, or an 
infamous source of misinformation. It therefore behoves 
television broadcasters to use this medium carefully and wisely.

The Bradshaw rock paintings, or Gwion Gwion as they are known to 
the Aboriginal traditional owners, are to be found in the remote 
and beautiful Kimberley region of Western Australia. The 
paintings, sophisticated and graceful drawings depicting highly 
decorated figures adorned with tassels, delicate jewellery and 
elaborate headdresses, are very old.

One would expect a responsible program about the possible origins 
of these paintings to utilise the services of archaeologists, 
cultural anthropologists, dating experts and other scientists to 
examine the latest evidence and reach reasoned, scientific 
conclusions.

But eccentric or controversial characters, even if they don't 
know what they are talking about, make for more "colourful" 
television. So people like Thor Hyerdahl can always get their 
outlandish theories aired on television.

The Riddle Of The Bradshaws on Lost Worlds (SBS 
8.30pm Sunday), although it does use some scientists, prefers to 
concentrate on "self-taught researcher" Grahame Walsh. Walsh has 
angered Aborigines by claiming that the paintings are the work of 
some earlier race that presumably had died out by the time 
Aborigines came to Australia.

The absence of any evidence whatsoever for such a race doesn't 
seem to faze him. Instead he continues his "research" into what 
he claims is a hidden language in the paintings.

So instead of an interesting and informative program about the 
Bradshaws, we have an annoying program about a misguided amateur 
enthusiast who proves once again that a little knowledge can be a 
dangerous thing.

The subject of Compass this week is Fighting Ageism 
(ABC 10.05pm Sunday). Ageism, the systematic stereotyping 
against older people, often goes unnoticed and unchallenged, says 
the program.

"Even though it's as wrong as racism and sexism, work-place 
ageism is now accepted as a major problem and can begin at just 
35. It determines retrenchment practices, access to training and 
treatment by employment agencies."

But is Compass concerned with the problems of, say, 
bricklayers trying to find work after 40? No, as you would 
expect, Compass's concern is for a group of "highly 
qualified middle managers in their 40s and 50s who were on six 
figure salaries before being retrenched".

Poor sods.

When imperialism plans to undertake some nasty piece of 
aggression or "regime change", it dishes up as much 
disinformation as it can about the target regime or country.

The US, and its running dogs Britain and Australia, is hell bent 
on bringing about the overthrow of Democratic People's Republic 
of Korea's Communist government. The DPRK (North Korea) is part 
of the "Axis of Evil" and the US (and Australia) take part in 
military exercises practising to invade the tiny Socialist 
country.

So it is not surprising that a piece of blatant disinformation, 
Access to Evil, a BBC This World report, turns up 
this week in the Cutting Edge timeslot (SBS 8.30pm 
Tuesday).

Not content with repeating as fact the highly fanciful US claims 
about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, BBC journalist 
Olenka Frenkiel trots out evidence of an even "more chilling 
evil": that North Korea is testing new chemical weapons on women 
and children.

The claims made are so reminiscent of the anti-Soviet propaganda 
of the Cold War: "hundreds of thousands of people are imprisoned 
without charge in North Korea's Gulag with its network of secret 
concentration camps", and so on.

As reports it, South Korea "knows all about the secret camps and 
the ghastly experiments carried out behind their electrified 
fences". Unfortunately, "all the government is interested in is 
economic stability".

Actually, South Korea is less than enthused about US efforts to 
start a new war on the Korean peninsular. With gob-smacking 
unconcern for the mountain of evidence to the contrary, Frenkiel 
also claims that the United States is not interested in pursuing 
any regime change in North Korea!

The US, Frenkiel claims, is "focused on homeland security". So 
"the only group pushing for a regime change in North Korea are 
that country's defectors". I'm sorry, say what?

If this nonsense irresistibly recalls other recent disinformation 
— about Saddam Hussein and Iraq's WMDs, say — that's probably 
because it comes from the same stable.

This week on New Tricks (ABC 9.30pm Fridays) the Unsolved 
Crime and Open Case Squad is taken to Buckingham Palace when one 
of the paintings in the "national collection" is discovered to be 
a fake. Their job is to discretely discover who made the fake and 
when was it substituted?

By the time they have finished, what began as a case of 
politically sensitive art fraud has become a case of arson, 
theft, murder, extortion and sundry other crimes which they 
happily leave their boss to take up with the DPP.

The team are joined for this episode by a young woman seconded 
from art fraud, the appropriately named Totty Vogel-Downing 
(Hattie Morahan). Tottie is undeterred by the initial frostiness 
towards her of the team's governor, Detective Superintendent 
Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman) and takes to their unconventional 
approach with gusto.

"I've learned a lot from you", she tells them after the case is 
solved, and confides to a startled Sandra, "You're one of my 
heroes."

A Wall To Wall production for the BBC, this series is proving 
deservedly popular and a second series goes into production in 
August.