The Guardian 29 June, 2005
TV programs worth watching
Sun July 3 — Sat July 9
This week’s episode of Grumpy Old Women (ABC 8.00pm Tuesdays) has some pertinent things to say about the status of women today. These grumpy middle aged women (they are not actually old) are, after all, the generation that fought for women’s liberation.
So it is not surprising that they are less than thrilled by today’s social scene, where, as Annette Crosbie puts it: "Women are expected to do everything, and a lot more than they used to.
"Because they’re expected to go out to work, to do the housekeeping, to do everything … to bring up the children — everything."
These grumpy women appear to be not only middle aged but mainly middle class — those whose names I recognise tend to be actors, writers, journalists, broadcasters, the MP Ann Widdecombe. Although several work at home, none of them work in a factory.
They are, however, articulate, with comments that are wry, amusing and to the point.
The second episode of the two-part documentary series about electronic surveillance, Someone’s Watching (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday), focuses on the private sector’s use of surveillance in the United States.
Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times reporter Lowell Bergman interviews all sorts of people to discover that most American employers are electronically monitoring their employees.
Two Los Angeles private investigators explain how eavesdropping devices which Americans buy supposedly to ensure their own security — such as home security cameras and "nannycams" — can easily be turned against us.
Someone’s Watching presents Americans whose lives have been changed by their encounters with surveillance: a grandmother who discovered that information about her use of prescription drugs — and the medicinal drug use of millions of other Americans — is openly being bought and sold.
And Bergman talks to a young woman who led a state-wide lobbying campaign when she learned that her landlord, who had installed a hidden camera in her bedroom, had not broken any law!
Only in America — so far.
DNA: The Secret Of Life (ABC 8.30pm Thursdays) is a five part series on the quest to unravel the secrets of DNA — what was its structure and how on earth does it work?
The series also explores the later developments, such as cloning and genetic engineering.
The first episode tells the story of the race to discover the structure of DNA, a race marked by intense academic rivalry, some of it still controversial. There were three teams researching DNA, one at Cambridge, one at King’s College, London, and double Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling in the USA.
The young Cambridge team of Jim Watson and Francis Crick got there first, but only with the help of invaluable research from Maurice Wilkins’ team at King’s College. One of his team says in the program that Wilkins "let the cat out of the bag" and cost them the victory.
But Wilkins, who worked on the atom bomb (and after it was dropped became an activist for nuclear disarmament), comments that he doesn’t think science (or cats) should be kept in bags, that science should be shared.
His attitude seems the least self-seeking and is certainly free of commercialism. He still works out of his little office at King’s College (unlike Jim Watson, now a multi-millionaire with this own research lab in the US).
Watson, however, has some trenchant things to say about the supposed role of God in the creation of life.
The short (one hour) musical drama One Night The Moon (ABC 11.05pm Thursday) is based on a 1997 documentary, Black Tracker.
Set in 1935, it tells the story of a small child lured by the moon into the bush. Her racist father refuses to use Albert, an Aboriginal tracker, in the search. Some time later the child’s mother employs Albert who finds her remains.
The cast is excellent, especially Kaarin Fairfax as the mother and Kelton Pell as Albert. He can convey a lot with a minimum of gesture.
The film features music and performance by Paul Kelly and Archie Roach, with backing music from the Xylouris ensemble. But, as I said when the program was originally shown, why, oh why, does a film set in Australia in the 1930s have all the songs by whites presented with jarring American Country-&-Western accents?
It says something about capitalism, it seems to me, when the villains in so many cop shows are part of some ruthless, corporate wrong doing. One simply cannot see the viewers at home going "Oh, how absurd, captains of industry and commerce would never do something like that".
In fact, it’s the fact thet they are prepared to resort to any activity, no matter how ruthless or even murderous, that probably got them to the position of captain of industry or commerce in the first place. And everyone knows it.
Taggart (ABC 8.30pm Fridays), a tough-minded, cogently written series, mixes its corporate villains with smaller fry who are often caught up in the schemes of bigger fish.
This week’s episode, A Taste Of Money, written by Charlie Fletcher, has loan sharking, property development, blackmail and extortion, as well as murder, in the restaurant business. But, as usual, it’s by no means straight forward.
During the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited the Montagnard hill tribes of Vietnam’s central highlands to kill Vietnamese workers and peasants fighting for their country’s freedom from US occupation. The Montagnards were paid a bounty for every Vietnamese they killed.
When the Vietnamese forced the US forces out of the country, the Montagnards were left behind to go on killing and terrorising. The last group of Montagnards did not surrender until 1992.
America’s Forgotten Allies, screening in As It Happened (SBS 7.30pm Saturday), is anti-Vietnamese propaganda utilising the emigré Montagnard community in the USA to make a case that "these loyal US allies" are being "brutally persecuted by the vengeful communists".
The Executive Director of the emigré Montagnard Foundation, located in South Carolina, is Kok Ksor. He was in the US undertaking military training when Vietnam was liberated in 1975.
Today he carries on fighting but now it’s a sophisticated propaganda war lobbying the US Congress and the United Nations.
This week’s episode of The Blues: A Musical Journey (ABC 10.10pm Saturdays) is directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, director of Buena Vista Social Club; Wings of Desire; Paris, Texas, among others.
This episode’s style is unusual, framing its tour of famous and contemporary blues performers in a fictional reminiscence supposedly of a childhood incident in the 1950s.
This bogus history sometimes gets in the way of the real history, but Wenders is even more explicit than Martin Scorsese was in the first episode in relating the blues to the racism and savage exploitation that was the lot of African Americans.
His episode is also simply crammed with performances — many captured at folk festivals in the ’60s, many others covers of famous performers’ songs by modern musicians.
This is a series that should be very popular when it comes out on DVD, as it is surely bound to do.