The Guardian 10 August, 2005
TV programs worth watching
Sun 14 August — Sat 20 August
The problem with TV programs about theatre is that television (or film) and theatre are distinctly
different media. Photographing a stage show does not have the same effect as watching it in a
theatre or seeing a film version of the show.
George M Cohan was a giant of Broadway, but when the six-part documentary series
Broadway: The American Musical (ABC 7.30pm Sundays) wants to show us
what Cohan was like on stage they use only a few actual clips of him performing and considerably
more — and more effective — clips from a feature film about his life (with Jimmy Cagney as
Cohan).
Nevertheless, despite these limitations, the first episode, Give My Regards To Broadway 1893
To 1927, is fascinating, especially its coverage of the 1919 strike by actors. The public
supported the actors, and then the musicians joined the strike, to be followed by the electricians
and stage-hands. Two days later it was all over: actors would be paid for rehearsals, they would
not have to provide their own costumes, they would get their fare back to New York if a touring
show folded, and so on.
Apart from the difficulty of capturing the essence of famous stage shows, the series suffers from
the common American fault of assuming that American culture is the acme of world culture, that
American musical theatre was and is superior to anything anywhere else.
This results in a dismissive approach to forms such as European operetta which in fact had a very
strong influence on the development of the American musical.
A new series of the light-hearted police show New Tricks begins this week (ABC
8.30pm Sundays). Amanda Redman returns as Superintendent Pullman who as disciplinary
punishment has been made to head up a special unit of retired coppers re-investigating unsolved
cases.
Her three experienced detectives, who have made her unit's clean-up rate the envy of the Met, are
excellently played, as before, by Dennis Waterman, Alun Armstrong and James Boland. Roy
Mitchell's scripts are are also up to their previous standard.
Each of the six self-contained stories in the new series Canterbury Tales (ABC
9.25pm Sundays) is a modern retelling of one of Henry Chaucer's famous bawdy tales.
This week's opener is The Miller's Tale, starring James Nesbitt (star of Murphy's
Law), Billie Piper (Doctor Who) and Dennis Waterman (New Tricks). Nesbitt is
the traveller who cons the publican (Waterman) out of a large amount of cash, shags his luscious
young wife (Piper), cleans out a nearby shop while framing a trio of kids and takes shameful
advantage of an old lady.
Whether they are motivated by greed, lust, ambition, loneliness or simply trust in someone they
think is a mate, they are all left in the lurch by Nesbitt's character.
Without continuing characters, Canterbury Tales is rather like watching a series of neat one-act
plays. The adaptation, by Peter Bowker, is very clever and the acting is first rate.
And, being Chaucer, we get to see a lot more of Billie Piper than we do on Dr Who!
Enemy Image (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday) is this week's Cutting
Edge documentary. The film traces the development of the image of war on American
television from Vietnam to the present day.
Enemy Image uses outstanding reports and images from American wars of the last 30 years to
explore the changing role of the war correspondent and the strange disappearance of dead bodies
from the image of war.
Writer-Director Mark Daniels comments, "This film developed out of my encounter with the
remarkable Vietnam War reporting of Wilfred Burchett and Roger Pic. They witnessed and reported
that war as no other Westerners could, and their body of work remains an historical
treasure.
"Their films opposed American images of technical and material power with images of revolutionary
solidarity, improvisation, and sacrifice. With the War in Iraq, … journalists 'embedded' with
American and British forces brought sights and sounds from the battlefield to the living room,
live.
"But where was the tragedy? Where was the cruelty? Where was the heroism?"
The great Soviet war cameraman and documentary director Roman Karmen (1906 –1975), is the
latest to get the anti-Soviet, anti-communist makeover that is now more or less obligatory for all
cultural figures from former socialist countries.
Karmen filmed the Long March in China, Ho Chi Minh at the time of the liberation of Vietnam and
Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra. He also filmed the Spanish Civil War from the Republican side,
the Japanese invasion of China, the Siege of Leningrad, the horrors of Nazi occupation and the
Nuremberg trials.
His well-known images of war have shaped our memory and constructed our collective vision of the
20th century. His prolific career is the subject of the profile entitled Roman Karmen: The
Filmmaker of the Revolution (SBS 10.30 pm Tuesday).
Regrettably, the film also attempts to discredit Karmen's honesty (he "manipulated" his images, the
dastardly fellow). And of course it paints him as a tragic figure who "slowly saw his ideals crumble
one by one".
Vietnam Minefield, screening in the Storyline Australia timeslot
(SBS 8.30pm Thursday), is the story of a wartime disaster that resulted from assuming that Asian
peasants were helpless against Western technology.
Between April and May, 1967, on the orders of Brigadier Stuart Graham Commander of the
Australian Task Force in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam, Australian sappers laid a minefield
100 metres wide by 11 kilometres long, containing 21,048 US M16 Jumping Jack
mines.
The Vietnamese forces began breaching the minefield between as early as May 1967. By
December of that year, the Australian engineers reported that the enemy was lifting the mines at
will, and the best estimate is that by 1970 they had lifted some 8000 of the mines.
The mines were then used against the Australian troops, causing over 57 percent of causalities
between September 1968 and February 1970. During this key period casualties from the Australian
mines far exceeded those by gunshot wounds.
Road To Tokyo (ABC 8.30pm Thursday) reminds us that Australia had a greater
proportion of men and women in uniform in WW2 than either Britain or the USA (one million out of
a population of only seven million).
Written and directed by film historian Graham Shirley, it covers Australia's military and political
involvement in the War, the horror of Japanese atrocities against POWs, labour shortages and
material shortages at home (with much footage I've never seen before), combined with interesting
and often emotional reminiscences.
Not surprisingly, these days, Shirley credits the A-bomb with ending the war and never mentions
Potsdam or the Allies insistence on Russia attacking Japan, an act which dashed Japan's hopes of
fighting on, using its Kwantung Army in China after the home islands fell.
If you enjoyed the recent series on the Blues, or if you enjoyed the soundtrack to the Cohen
brothers' film Oh Brother Where Art Thou, then you should get a kick out of the last of this
week's new series, Lost Highway: The Story Of Country Music (ABC 10.10pm
Saturdays).
When I was about ten, every radio station ran "request" programs, but I remember those on the
North Coast of NSW used to stipulate "No hillbilly music". Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger might view
this music as authentic American folk, but that nasal twang was not welcome on commercial radio
here.
Today, of course, the bluegrass songs of Kentucky and Tennessee, and the distinctive banjo and
guitar rhythms that go with them, are not only recognised as part of America's folk heritage, they
have spawned an industry and a genre.
It does seem a pity, however, that through the power of broadcasting and the record industry, this
American form has so completely displaced Australia's own folk music. Today, Australian country
singers seem to find it necessary to fake an American accent even when their song has an obvious
Australian subject.