TV programs worth watching
Sun November 28 — Sat December 4

The Debt (ABC 8.30pm Sunday) is a stand-alone drama 
marked by considerable complexity in its characterisations plus a 
certain amount of cynicism. Written by Richard McBrien, this tale 
of ordinary criminals, police and lawyers has more than a touch 
of Damon Runyon about it.

All the sympathetic characters — the ones you care about — are 
either bent or capable of being bent. Everyone has either money 
or domestic problems, often both.

The central character, Geoff Dresner, is a safecracker so 
terrified of going back to prison that he's become an honest 
baker. When his good-for-nothing son-in-law Terry (a scaffolder) 
gets into debt to a local loan shark, Geoff must face the 
prospect of returning to crime and even to prison to save his 
family.

Geoff is well played by a rather meek-looking Warren Clarke 
(better known as hard-as-nails DSI Andy Dalziel and the husband 
in Down To Earth). Terry is played by Martin Freeman (Tim 
in The Office and the naked male stand-in in Love 
Actually).

Geoff's lawyer (Lee Williams) is having an affair with a female 
colleague while pretending delight that his wife has just had 
their first baby. For the sake of his career he will willingly 
sacrifice all his principles.

One of the coppers, DS Foster (played by Hugo Spear), moonlights 
as a taxi driver to pay for his son's schooling. This leaves him 
so knackered that he cannot perform as a detective and is passed 
over for promotion.

He finds himself fitting Geoff Dresner up for arson and murder in 
order to have a success and help his career. His DI (played by 
Nina Sosanya) lies under oath to support his frame-up because she 
is soft on him.

And so on. As circumstances, lies and lack of money conspire to 
send poor Geoff back to prison for life, hope seems to be a 
commodity in very short supply.

But stay with it, for it's not over till it's over and crime (or 
cynicism) still has a card up its sleeve.

The Office begins a repeat season this week (ABC 10.00pm 
Mondays). A mock observational documentary, The Office 
depicted a ghastly working environment — underpaid dead-end 
jobs, irritating colleagues and a smug, sexist boss — that was 
instantly recognised as being so true to life.

In fact, it was so comically horrifying that it became a hit in 
Britain and winner of numerous awards 

Co-writers/directors Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant spent 
over 12 years between them trapped in offices. The result is 
wonderfully observed comedy but it is the brilliant cast that 
make it work so well.

David Brent in particular, as the boss of the office (a branch of 
a large chain), is a painfully loathsome creation. Painful 
because we've all met just such creatures in just such positions.

Saddam Hussein: The Trial The World Will Never See (SBS 
8.30pm Tuesday) looks at evidence it says will never be presented 
or discussed at Saddam's trial — evidence of the complicity of 
the US (and to a lesser degree France and Germany) in his crimes.

The program charges that the United States not only supported the 
Iran-Iraq war — which resulted in the deaths of over a million 
people — but gave Iraq a "green light" to proceed with the war 
and even helped it to plan the conflict.

It claims that France supplied fighter planes and an American 
intelligence expert says that French pilots even flew missions.

Retired US Air-force Lieutenant Colonel Tom Francona says that 
the United States and its allies knew about the use of chemical 
weapons by Saddam's army against Iranians and Iraqis from when it 
began but chose not to act on the information.

The film asserts that when Saddam used chemical weapons to murder 
more than 5000 Kurds in Halabja, Iraq, in 1988 the US initially 
claimed Iran was responsible for the deaths and refused to meet 
Kurdish witnesses of the crime or meet with members of the Iraqi 
opposition.

French and German companies allegedly supplied Iraq's chemical 
weapons program. Significantly, the French Government did not 
directly condemn the massacre.

The documentary looks at the relationship between the United 
States' commercial and strategic relations with Iraq and the 
failure of President Bush (Snr) to act when told that Hussein's 
troops were mobilising for the invasion of Kuwait.

Finally, the program asserts that the US and its allies were 
complicit in the slaughter of 300,000 Shiites — killed by 
Hussein after they rose up against him in 1991, after his defeat 
in the first Gulf War.

Most of us are familiar with the charges but it's nice to see 
them on the screen.

A few years ago, Aardman Animation, the makers of Wallace & 
Gromit and Chicken Run, made a short film called 
Creature Comforts. It was an amusing piece in which 
recorded interviews with ordinary Britons were put into the 
mouths of surprisingly appropriate animated plasticine animals.

So successful was the concept that Aardman went on to do a series 
of TV ads for British Gas using the idea.

Now, at last, Nick Park at Aardman has apparently decided to 
revive and expand the concept. The result is a new series of ten-
minute shorts, with the overall title, again, of Creature 
Comforts.

The comments from what the credits call "the great British 
public" are often bizarre, but even the most mundane provide the 
animators and director Richard Goleszowski with splendid 
opportunities (a middle-aged woman's response "I'm actually 
afraid of the sea" in a discussion on the pleasures of the 
seaside takes on a wealth of new meaning when put in the mouth of 
a walruss).

Comments from patients in a doctor's waiting room have an added 
resonance when used as dialogue for animals visiting the vet.

As you can see, the series is comprised of variations on a single 
joke. Watch more than a few minutes at a single stretch and it 
quickly palls.

Aardman, sensibly, have accordingly made the series in ten-minute 
episodes so as not to outstay its welcome.

Used as a filler once a week, in the manner of Black Cab, 
it would make an amusing and clever interlude. But that is not 
how the ABC is going to show it.

They are running it three episodes at a time (ABC 8.30pm 
Thursdays) — a nice, neat half-hour block, you see. That's the 
way I watched the preview tapes and it's the wrong way to screen 
this material.