TV programs worth watching
Sun October 3 — Sat October 9

When there are big profits involved, capitalist corporations 
do not believe in leaving things to chance. This is especially so 
when the profits are spectacular, as in the case of the so-called 
ethical drugs or pharmaceuticals industry.

Instead, the drug companies now spend some of their profits on 
devising ways of convincing people that normal, everyday 
conditions that affect most people in some way (such as shyness) 
are in fact diseases — for which the drug giants just happen to 
have a new miracle cure.

Then they spend an even bigger chunk of their profits in direct 
marketing of their new "disease" and its cure — in sure and 
certain knowledge that they will reap huge rewards in the form of 
even bigger profits.

GlaxoSmithKline greatly expanded the market for its popular anti-
depressant, Paxil, by identifying shyness as a new psychiatric 
condition, "Social Anxiety Disorder" (SAD), for which Paxil was 
the revolutionary treatment. Direct marketing did the rest.

In 2002 drug companies spent close to US$3 billion in the United 
States alone on direct-to-consumer advertising.

The Cutting Edge documentary Selling Sickness (SBS 
8.30pm Tuesday) examines accusations that aggressive drug 
marketing is blurring the boundaries between medical conditions 
and ordinary life with potentially deadly consequences.

Selling Sickness explores the intensifying conflict over 
the very nature of illness itself and tracks the sophisticated 
ways in which pharmaceutical companies market their drugs. 

Throughout the program, drug marketer and industry insider Vince 
Parry explains the intricacies of how to "brand a condition" or 
define what an illness is in order to create and expand the 
market for a drug. There is now an ill for every pill.

Patients' stories are intercut with Dr David Healy who now 
travels the world speaking out about the potential risks of these 
medicines, concerned that a decade of mass marketing has 
transformed once rare conditions into modern epidemics. Healy is 
also alarmed about potential links between SSRI anti-depressant 
drugs and suicidal behaviour among adolescents.

Selling Sickness was commissioned by SBS and directed by 
Catherine Scott. 

SBS is repeating The President Versus David Hicks, 
screening in the Hot Docs timeslot (SBS 10.00pm Tuesday). 
It seeks to uncover how a 26-year-old former stockman from 
Adelaide, Australia, ended up as a Taliban fighter and now an 
inmate of the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.

It is worth remembering that David Hicks was already fighting in 
Kosovo before he became interested in Islam. He was an anti-
communist mercenary, seduced and grievously misled by the same 
imperialism that now denies him his basic democratic rights.

Our support for Hicks now is part of our rejection of imperialism 
and all its evil deeds (including its use of mercenaries in 
Kosovo).

Jonathan Creek is briefly back this week and next (ABC 
9.20pm Fridays). This was a series that never fulfilled the 
promise of its ingenious concept; however, it hung in there 
doggedly and is beginning to improve at last.

Alan Davies continues his less than dynamic portrayal of Creek, 
whose job is to plan spectacular magic acts for an undeserving 
slob of a magician. His skills in deception and illusion 
supposedly give him the edge in solving "baffling" crimes.

For the new series he has been given a new female foil, TV crime 
series presenter Carla Borrego played by Julia Sawalha (Saffi, 
the daughter in Absolutely Fabulous).

Sawalha's bosom is given even more prominence in this week's 
episode than it was in Pride And Prejudice: "Cleavage is 
very in, at present", she tells a disapproving (and slightly 
alarmed) Creek.

The supporting cast has been racked up a notch too, with some top 
comedy acting talent added including Adrian Edmondson from The 
Young Ones (and regular cameos as the food critic in Ab 
Fab), now a regular as Sawalha's insensitive TV producer 
husband.

Also added is Bill Bailey, the scruffy-looking odd-ball from 
Black Books, as a very cut-price "magician" who works the crowds 
at street markets.

Although Creek is given not one but two "inexplicable" mysteries 
to solve in this week's episode, the producers — as well as 
writer/creator David Renwick — clearly see the Davies-Sawalha 
relationship as the main appeal of the new series. They may be 
right.

One of the program's strengths, however, remains its blunt 
rejection of the fashionable trend for supernatural explanations 
and plots, insisting instead on prosaic observed fact, logic and 
scientific reality (this is particularly explicit in next week's 
episode).

The importance to governments of having successful national 
sporting teams has been recognised for centuries. Baron Pierre de 
Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, sought to promote this 
national sporting competitiveness as an alternative to war.

However, bourgeois governments were quick to bypass de 
Coubertin's lofty ideals in favour of marshalling sporting 
fervour in their own interests. As early as the second Olympic 
Games in Paris in 1900, de Coubertin lost control of the Games to 
the French Government, which wished to use them to promote "the 
glory of France" rather than the glory of sport.

Later, the 20th Century's three most prominent fascist dictators 
— Mussolini, Hitler and Franco — stopped at nothing to secure 
sporting glory for their countries in order to foster domestic 
support for their rule, boost their own egos, "prove" their 
racial theories and bolster their ideological position.

All three seized upon football's massive popular appeal and 
ruthlessly exploited it as a vehicle for propaganda. Fascism 
And Football, a BBC documentary screening in the As It 
Happened timeslot (SBS 7.30pm Saturday), shows how Mussolini, 
Hitler and Franco used their power to shape the destinies of the 
world's most important clubs, and intervened in international 
competitions for their own gain.

Poignant archival footage and dramatic reconstructions of key 
moments tell the stories of players whose lives were profoundly 
affected by Fascism's foray into football.

It has been claimed that the entire 1934 World Cup competition 
was nothing more than a stage for Mussolini's fascist propaganda 
while Hitler was just as involved in the 1938 World Cup, which he 
saw as one of the defining moments of the superiority of his 
Fascist regime.

The Nazis' efforts to get the best players for Germany's national 
team, the newly combined Austro-German team, suffered a serious 
setback when Austrian football star Matthias Sindelar — the 
David Beckham of his day, who hated the Nazis — refused to play 
for them. He soon met a suspicious death from carbon monoxide 
poisoning.

In post-war Spain, Franco used Real Madrid and the talent of 
Alfredo di Stefano — arguably the greatest player of all time — 
to cement his power and orchestrate Spain's "re-integration" into 
Europe.