TV programs worth watching
Sun August 15 — Sat August 21

Australian filmmaker Cathy Henkel was born in Johannesburg. In 
1988, Cathy's mother was sexually assaulted and brutally bashed 
in her home there by a white teenager. Although she identified 
her attacker from his school photograph, he was never 
charged.

When Cathy returned to South Africa in 2002 to try to get some 
justice for her mother, she found that a new police unit had been 
formed solely to deal with sexual assault. The head of this unit 
reopened her mother's case.

However, it was soon discovered that "all the files and documents 
relating to my mother's case had vanished without a trace. There 
were no fingerprints, no DNA samples and no records of the 
investigation.

"The investigating officer who had handled the case at the time 
refused to co-operate and was unable to provide satisfying 
answers in relation to the missing files and why the suspect had 
not been apprehended."

That original copper, like her mother's neighbours, clearly 
thought a rape victim only had herself to blame and "must have 
been asking for it". It is also clear, although Cathy Henkel does 
not say so, that money almost certainly changed hands to hush up 
the investigation and bury the charges against the (white) youth.

The 2002 investigation was also hampered by the endemic nature of 
sexual assault in South Africa today: a woman is raped every 26 
seconds. The new sexual assault unit had a staggering 1800 other 
cases it was currently investigating.

Capitalism and apartheid have left South Africa with a legacy of 
poverty, superstition and cultural backwardness. Virgin rape, 
even child and baby rape, is commonplace.

There is an unfortunate but widespread belief that raping a 
virgin child will in some way "cleanse" the perpetrator of HIV. 
In a country where AIDS is rampant, the consequences are all too 
apparent.

Cathy Henkel finally took matters into her own hands, using a 
private detective to find her mother's attacker. Fourteen years 
after the crime, she finally confronted the man who raped and 
bashed her mother.

Sub-titled A Search for Justice, her film The Man Who 
Stole My Mother's Face (ABC 9.30pm Wednesday) was co-winner 
of the prize for Best Documentary Feature at the 2004 New York 
Tribeca Film Festival.


Starting this week, the ABC is repeating series two of Kath 
And Kim (ABC 8.30pm Thursdays), written and produced by its 
stars, Jane Turner and Gina Riley.

I don't usually care for programs that show the mannerisms and 
speech-patterns of working class people as something comic. It 
smacks of all those cartoons in Punch a century ago 
pruporting to find comedy in the ways of ignorant serving girls 
and rustic farm labourers.

Kath And Kim however does manage to transcend that 
formula, largely through its accute observation of certain middle 
class cultural aspirations. And there is no doubt that Turner and 
Riley can be very funny.

John Nettles seems to have only ever played two characters in his 
whole career, both coppers: Bergerac, in the series of that name, 
where he caught villains on the island of Jersey, and DCI Barnaby 
in the rustic English village community of Midsomer.

An actor of very limited range, Nettles is probably best suited 
to playing coppers. Certainly his stiff portrayal of Barnaby 
seems to suit the part.

Based on the Inspector Barnaby novels of Caroline Graham, 
Midsomer Murders (ABC 8:30pm Fridays) is one of the UK's 
longest running detective drama series, which might say something 
about how British viewers like their coppers uncomplicated.

Midsomer Murders is competent, professional, undemanding -
- even relaxing — television, just the sort of thing for viewing 
on Friday evening. As a crime show, however, it does have its 
little defects.

Like the fact that although the district cannot be very large and 
Barnaby and his colleagues all live there, they seem not to know 
most of the people. Strange.

And the formulaic way the script will never be content with just 
one murder, but must have a second and preferably a third before 
the villain is unmasked.

At this rate, it is clear why Barnaby does not know his 
neighbours: they obviously don't live long enough to get to know 
them.