TV programs worth watching
Sun September 19 — Sat September 25

Television is ideally suited to doing stories about elaborate 
confidence tricks. (Think Mission Impossible). A fast 
pace, a flurry of action and plenty of visual distraction allows 
television programs to gloss over the plot illogicalities that 
are the hallmark of this type of show.

The elaborate cons depend on a succession of coincidences, inside 
information or specialised knowledge the con-artists could not 
possibly have, and on no one ever asking the questions demanded 
by commonsense.

But why carp? These programs are never meant to be taken 
seriously. They are like jokes: for a joke to work, the 
characters in it have to do and say just the right things. So it 
is with programs about confidence tricksters.

There are also conventions about this type of program: the victim 
must get what he or she deserves. No one wants to see a program 
about little old ladies being done out of their life savings or 
their engagement ring.

That, however, is what most real life cons are about. In the TV 
con, the victim is usually greedy or a crook; our sympathy is 
safely with the con artist.

So it is in the new series Hustle (ABC 8.30pm Sundays). 
The series is about a gang that specialises in "the long con" 
(elaborate confidence tricks played for big stakes). In fact, a 
con could hardly get more elaborate than the one in the first 
episode.

The con artists are played by Adrian Lester, Marc Warren, Robert 
Vaughn, Robert Glenister and Jaime Murray.

The program contains all the usual plot holes, but the main 
irritant is not logical but stylistic: for some misjudged reason 
in a program relying on the suspension of disbelief, the director 
has the main protagonists — while setting up the con — look 
directly at the camera and either wink or otherwise "mug".

Of greater curiosity, and more successful, is the freezing of 
screen time at the moment when the victim (the "mark") is taking 
the bait and committing to the bogus "deal", while the con 
artists discuss the options available to the victim (in the first 
episode while coffee slowly pours out of the mark's suspended 
coffee pot like thick molasses.

Intellectually, this series is pure pulp fiction, but the 
suspense is well maintained and the whole thing is done with a 
certain panache.

According to the Cutting Edge program From China With 
Love (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday), the FBI must be one of the dopiest 
outfits around. The program, from the PBS Frontline crew, 
allegedly details the career of Katrina Leung, "a prized FBI 
asset for 20 years, supplying information on China which made its 
way to four American presidents".

Now Leung has been arrested and accused of actually being an 
agent for China and her FBI handler JJ Smith has been accused of 
helping her.

It gets worse: after they were exposed, the FBI supposedly 
allowed her to return to the field and allowed JJ to continue as 
her handler. Is that the way to run a counterespionage operation?

I no longer trust anything from Frontline anymore; they 
are too close to the White House and the State Department. If you 
wanted to stir up a "China Threat" to replace the "Soviet 
Threat", this is one of the organisations you would use.

The brilliant cod "amateur documentary" People Like Us 
starts a repeat season this week (ABC 10.00pm Tuesdays). 
Written and directed by John Morton, the series stars Chris 
Langham as hopeless TV reporter Roy Mallard.

Mallard causes understated mayhem in the life of the people he's 
filming (played by a splendid line-up of British acting talent), 
while the series guys the solemn BBC approach that Mallard 
strives for.

This week's episode looks at a small town newspaper. Mallard's 
wrap at the end is typical, as he observes how a collection of 
disparate fragments becomes, through some strange alchemy known 
only to journalists, a newspaper that is "greater than the sum of 
its total".

As a public broadcaster, the ABC should be above the 
dissemanating of codswallop and unscientific nonsense. But it is 
not.

With the collapse in the funding of science (accompanied by an 
increase in the funding of technology instead), scientific 
journals and television programs (especially those from the US) 
have had to go after popularity to survive.

In the US, however, science is under extreme pressure to embrace 
the ruling class's view of the world, as a place that is full of 
"complex mysteries" far beyond our comprehension. It is subject 
to every kind of phenomenon, from flying visits by aliens to the 
continuing prevalence of witchcraft.

The enjoyable fantasy of TV programs such as Charmed and 
Buffy the Vampire Slayer or movies such as Harry Potter 
is subtly promoted by the ruling class as a vision of 
reality. This in turn spills over into popular science programs 
which increasingly support notions of "ancient magic", unseen 
energy fields, pyramids with mysterious powers, and so on.

In short, the bourgoisie is using its control of the mass media 
and market forces to slowly but deliberately impose a 
metaphysical view on people in lieu of a materialist one.

And so we have the nonsense that surrounds crop circles, 
exemplified in Unsigned Circles (ABC 9.30pm Wednesday).

My neighbour has a very large fairy circle of mushrooms on her 
lawn at the moment. However, I no more believe it is the work of 
fairies than I think aliens from outerspace caused it.

There are lots of people who think that "crop circles", circular 
flattened areas in wheatfields etc, are the work of aliens or 
non-human intelligences with gifted design skills or even the 
great carp at the basic level of existence on whose back our 
level of existence rests (when the carp blows bubbles they rise 
up through the various levels until they cause a circular ripple 
on the surface, hence crop circles).

Not slow to seize an opportunity, capitalist entrepreneurs have 
established an industry providing tours would you believe to 
famous crop circle sites. These are proving very popular with 
Americans especially.

Curiously, they were not seriously affected by the revelations a 
couple of years ago that the majority of famous crop circles were 
the deliberate creations of a mischievous group of scientists!

In promoting Unsigned Circles, the ABC happily repeats 
absurd and patently fallacious claims that "the areas within the 
flattened crop circles have been found to emit an electro 
magnetic energy that interferes with camera batteries, flying 
equipment up to 500 metres above ground and even causes intense 
headaches for those in close proximity".

It quotes a British author who says "the energy is a positive 
force and crops affected have subsequently grown more efficiently 
and strongly after they straighten". And so and so on.

Not a trace of the scepticism that is the mark of a true 
scientist. Not a trace of scientific method. Even common sense is 
abandoned as the ABC unashamedly records "the growing realisation 
that the world we live in is infinitely more complex and 
mysterious than we could ever have imagined".