The Guardian 22 March, 2006
TV programs worth watching
Sun March 26 — Sat April 1
She’s Gone (ABC 8.30pm Sunday) is a tense drama about a businessman whose daughter disappears while abroad, leaving him caught up in his own worst nightmare. Olivia, the teenage daughter of plain-speaking Harry Sands was supposedly in Istanbul to do charity work, but was in fact working as an "exotic dancer" in a sleazy nightclub.
When Harry flies out to try to find her, his bullnecked approach proves less than effective, although he does learn some disquieting truths about his "little girl".
Sands is played by Ray Winstone, who looks as though he was born to play coppers or forklift truck operators, but his "ordinariness" fits in perfectly here.
Disappointingly, perhaps, Nigel Marvin’s Animal Detectives (ABC 9.35pm Monday) is not a British clone of Austria’s Inspector Rex, but a documentary about the way forensic scientists can use maggots and other animals to ascertain when, where and in what way someone was murdered.
The procedures are not only messy but also very complex: certain types of maggots eat other types (destroying evidence); insect activity can be seriously delayed by wrapping the body in a couple of blankets (misleading the experts).
As dead but fully-clothed pigs are shot, thrown in rivers and blown up by "terrorist bombs", an extraordinary array of forensic devices are examined.
Tennessee University even has a "body farm" where researchers leave actual human cadavers out in the woods to be gnawed by animals and insects. What does it say about the American funeral industry that there is a waiting list of people wanting to have their bodies "dumped" in the university’s woods?
Despite the potentially enthralling subject matter, the program is an unfortunate mixture of dull and twee, a fault that can largely be laid at the feet of host Nigel Marvin. Unquestionably, it would have been a better program if he had been left out altogether — preferably in the woods, being chewed by badgers!
The videotaped message left behind by the London Underground suicide bombers revealed that they were angry with "the people of Western countries" for accepting their comfortable lives without demur while the US and its imperialist allies inflicted great suffering on the people of the Middle East.
By striking at ordinary people rather than at figureheads, they hoped to make people wake up and take stock of what was being done in their name.
Suicide Bombers — A Psychological Investigation, screening in the Cutting Edge timeslot (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday), takes a different view. The "experts" in this film allege that suicide bombing is based on group conformity.
One of these experts, Professor Ariel Merari, from Israel, has discovered that suicide bombers "do not exhibit signs of mental illness". Ex-CIA case officer and forensic psychiatrist Dr Marc Sageman says that the experience of cultural estrangement is important: 75 percent of his sample joined al-Qaeda when they were living abroad.
"I had no epiphany. No singular revelation. No moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a thousand unremembered moments in me; an anger, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people" — Nelson Mandela in The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela (SBS 10.00pm Tuesday).
Written and directed by Robin Benger for Canada’s public broadcaster CBC, The Life And Times Of Nelson Mandela features interviews with everyone from FW de Klerk to Winnie Mandela and his fellow prisoners Ahmed Kathrada, Mac Maharaj and Tokyo Sexwale.
He offers frank opinions on current world affairs ("If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world it is the United States of America").
"If I had to live again, I would do exactly the same thing, as long as our people are oppressed and deprived of everything to make human beings happy and to enjoy life, it was my duty to be involved and I would do it over and over again."
Give Me A Break is a four-part documentary series screening in the Inside Australia timeslot (SBS 7.30pm Wednesdays). The series gives four people the chance to change their lives by experiencing a job they’ve only dreamed about doing.
The four individuals are helped along their way by four "mentors" who work in the differing industries.
This week’s first episode features 28-year-old Mallika Macleod, a Policy Officer who wants to be chef. Next week we meet a 17-year-old schoolgirl in Mt Magnet, a remote mining town that does not even have a drama club, but who nevertheless wants to be an actor.
The following week is the one that intrigues me: 28-year-old barman Dave Feighan’s passion is … to work in real estate.
Battlefield Detectives (ABC 8.30pm Thursdays), a series that must be the delight of war-gamers everywhere but probably no one else, this week deals with the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Norman conquest of England.
All sorts of arcane skills are on display here, from how to make and wield a battleaxe to interpreting the prominent testicles (of horses and some men) in the Bayeux Tapestry.
This series spurns the use of historians, preferring to piece together "what really happened" from the analysis of assorted "experts". Thus the tactics of English King Harold are examined by a serving senior British army officer.
William’s aims, on the other hand, are explained by a university lecturer in Business Administration, who treats the Norman attack on England as a hostile takeover of a rival business.
The growth of social forces and their attendant political economy rarely gets a mention.
Roy Hollsdötter Live (SBS 8.30pm Thursday), is the last instalment in the Fresh Australian Drama series of short feature films.
It is the story of stand-up comic Roy (Darren Casey), whose personal relationship with this girlfriend has turned sour, and his comedy has done the same.
Writer/Director Matthew Saville won an AWGIE (Australian Writers’ Guild Award) for Best Original Screenplay for this drama.
Also in the cast are Luke Elliott as Roy’s best mate Simmo, Asher Keddie as Cate, the girlfriend, and John Clarke as Mike, manager of the comedy club.
The new series of Doc Martin (ABC 7.30pm Saturdays) has noticeably mellowed: the mood is more bucolic, the irritating receptionist has been replaced, and there is even a fanciful dream sequence.
Martin Clunes’ portrayal of the reluctant village doctor as an anti-social grouch still doesn’t fool anyone, but the new series is certainly more watchable.