The Guardian 6 December, 2006
TV programs previewed:
Sunday Dec 10 — Saturday Dec 16
In Schools Spectacular 2006 (ABC 7.30pm Sunday) the talents of more than 3000
young performers will shine. Hosted by John Foreman, this inspirational performing arts
showcase — now in its 23rd year — is a dazzling display of colour, energy and music that
reflects the optimism and joy of the participants. The Spectacular has launched the
careers of a host of Australia's most popular entertainers and has introduced tens of
thousands of public school students to the thrill of performing to huge live
audiences.
A 1200-voice choir, an 80-piece orchestra, 1500 dancers, rock, jazz and brass bands and talented
soloists from ages 5-18 are all woven into a totally integrated seamless production. There is no
show of this scale and quality anywhere in the world. Students from more than 300 public schools,
from the remote outback to the inner city, rehearse for months in preparation for four shows over
two days and nights.
The documentary Citizen King (SBS 2pm Monday) explores the last five years in
Martin Luther King's life by drawing on the personal recollections and eyewitness accounts of
friends, movement associates, journalists, law enforcement officers and historians to illuminate the
story of one of America's most important and influential moral leaders.
Framed by the Lincoln Memorial speech and his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, this two-
part documentary traces King's effort to recast himself by embracing causes beyond the civil rights
movement — to "transform and re-structure the whole of American society" as he put it. In this brief
five-year span, his decisions would alienate many of his closest friends and further inflame his
enemies.
As he began to speak out against the war in Vietnam and refashion himself as the leader of a
crusade on behalf of the poor and dispossessed in America, King was accused of abandoning his
mission. In his crusade for economic justice and an end to war, King found himself at odds not only
with white American leadership, but also with many influential black leaders. However he remained
steadfast in his profound spiritual commitment to the human rights of all people and to the way of
non-violence and creative peacemaking.
Tribe (SBS Saturday 7.30pm) This is the second series of the popular BBC
program in which former Royal Marine, Bruce Parry, sheds the trappings of a Western existence
and journeys to meet some of the world's oldest and most remote tribes. He chooses to immerse
himself in the lives of the indigenous people and by doing this then brings us a first hand account of
their traditions and practices, some of which may not be around for ever.
During this series Parry travels to the Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia — "the cradle of mankind"–
to live with three different tribes. The Omo Valley is a remote, arid river valley populated by some
of the most extraordinary people in the world: proud tribes of cattle herding nomads, armed with
Kalashnikovs, flamboyantly decorated. These tribes are almost all at vicious war with one
another.
In this episode he visits the Galeb people, who fish to survive in this harsh landscape. They also
have an extraordinary rites of passage ceremony — stealing sacred mud from the land of sworn
enemies the Turkana, then killing a cow with a single thrust from a spear. These are all initiation
ceremonies which Parry must complete to be accepted.
The first part of tonight's Global Village (SBS 6pm Thursday) presented by Silvio
Rivier is "Time Travellers". The masterpiece of Sebastian Cabot, a learned mapmaker and great
navigator, is a map of the world made in 1544. The only copy is kept in the National Library of
France in Paris. It is crucially important to researchers as it represents the culmination of 50 years
of exploration.
In the second part of the program, "The Lumberjacks Of Lessosibirsk", we visit the lumber
settlement of Lessosibirsk, a gigantic sawmill in the depths of the Taiga in central Siberia. No road
leads to Lesosibirsk and the only way to get there is by the river. The timber is processed and
slowly tugged down the river to become furniture or building materials.
Every year Sweden throws a party that is watched all around the world. Only the best and brightest
in the world are called to Stockholm. Since the Nobel Prizes began they have come to be
recognised as a benchmark of human achievement.
One balmy evening in the most isolated capital in the world, Perth, Western Australia, two
unassuming medical blokes were interrupted while enjoying their fish and chips by a phone call
from Stockholm. They had won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine and could they make it to the
Awards ceremony in December?
In The Winners' Guide To The Nobel Prize (ABC 9.20pm Thursday) we follow
Australian doctors Barry Marshall and Robin Warren as they journey to the podium amid the
cultural pomp and precise scheduling. It was in 1979, in a modest hospital laboratory in Perth, that
pathologist Robin Warren first observed a bacterium which survived in the human stomach. He
teamed up with enthusiastic young gastroenterologist Barry Marshall and together they promoted
the thesis that this bacterium, not stress, caused gastritis and stomach ulcers.
On July 26, 1956, Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt made a strategic move that caught the Western
world by surprise. He nationalised the Suez Canal Company, precipitating what became known as
the Suez Crisis — one of the biggest political stalemates of the century. The Other Side Of
Suez (SBS 1pm Friday) reveals the complexity of this historic story from the Egyptian and
Russian perspective.
Anthony Eden, the British Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957, deeply resented President Nasser's
championing of Egyptian independence. He actively encouraged plots to fabricate dissent, turned a
blind eye to several assassination attempts and eventually conspired with the French and the
Israelis to manufacture a "war" as an excuse for sending in British troops to "act as a buffer"
between the Egyptians and the Israelis and protect Western interests.
Eden sabotaged UN efforts for a negotiated settlement, described Nasser as a Soviet puppet who
must be removed, cited inflated intelligence reports to back up his arguments, and disastrously
under-estimated the resistance of the Egyptian population to the sending in of British troops. Sound
familiar?
Corner Gas — The Taxman – (SBS 7.30 Friday), a 13-part series, focuses on the
lives of people in a fictional prairie town of Dog River, Saskatchewan. In this episode, a taxman
arrives to audit the Corner Gas business records, Brent's dad Oscar and friend Hank immediately
plot revenge by devising a fool-proof plan to humiliate the auditor. Unfortunately for Hank and
Oscar, Emma's excellent record-keeping throws the whole clock-work operation into
chaos.