TV Programs Worth Watching:
Sun June 9 — Sat June 15

SBS' schedule this week is largely taken over by the 2002 FIFA World 
Cup, with matches every day from football stadia in either Japan or Korea. 
Apart from a BBC program of reminiscences about John Lennon's early years, 
I Knew John Lennon (SBS 8.00pm Saturday), anyone after non-football 
viewing will basically have to watch the ABC.

Pablo Picasso, who was born in laga, Spain, on October 25, 1881, displayed 
an early ability to draw and then to paint. By his 20s he was a major 
international avant garde artist.

By the time of his death in France in 1973, he had contributed an enormous 
body of work, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, ceramics, and 
poetry, that contributed significantly to and paralleled the whole 
development of modern art in the 20th century.

But Picasso was never an "abstract" artist. For all his experimentation 
with form, with revisiting art history and with a variety of artistic 
media, his works were solidly based in reality.

His subjects were drawn from life, whether he was depicting the inmates of 
the Women's Prison of Saint-Lazare in Paris ("The Soup", 1902), the down-
and-outs of Barcelona ("Blind Man's Meal", 1903), or the prostitutes of the 
Avignon Street brothels, a popular haunt for sailors in Barcelona, ("Les 
Demoiselles d'Avignon", 1907).

Picasso collaborated with the Surrealist movement between the two world 
wars, especially with the writers, like Jean Cocteau. They claimed him as 
one of their own, but he never officially joined the movement.

His life, and that of his artistic circle, in Paris had been disrupted by 
the carnage of WW1. By the late '20s Picasso and many other artists could 
recognise the veracity of the Communists' warnings about the rise of 
fascism and the threat of a new world war.

When war and fascism came to Spain in 1936, Picasso produced various 
artworks to be sold to raise money for the Republican cause. In 1937, his 
great work of protest against war and fascism, "Guernica", was produced.

Also in 1937, Picasso's works along with those of Kandinsky, Kirchner and 
other major artists of the 20th century figured prominently in the Nazis' 
exhibition "Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst), held in Munich and advertised 
as "the decadent work of Bolsheviks and Jews".

In 1944, after the Liberation of Paris, Picasso announced that he had 
joined the Communist Party. There were demonstrations against his political 
views at the first post-Liberation Autumn Salon (an annual art exhibition).

He continued to publicly support the peace movement (creating the famous 
dove symbol and supplying works to fund peace activities) and to defy the 
Cold War atmosphere of the Post War decades.

His stature as an artist and an avant-garde icon was unassailable, 
nevertheless. It became necessary for bourgeois propagandists to try to 
portray his party membership as an eccentricity and a whim, not a sincerely 
felt and considered political position.

His reputation, like that of another prominent Communist artist, Bertoldt 
Brecht, has been subtly attacked and undermined in the years since the 
overthrow of the Soviet Union.

Brecht, it was alleged, stole his ideas from the women in his life. Picasso 
was said to be a womaniser whose principal influences and themes were 
"magic, sex and death", which "dominated his life and work".

This travesty is expounded at length in a three-part series, Picasso: 
Magic, Sex And Death (ABC 3:35pm Sundays).

If King Arthur was a real person he was probably a warrior lord of some 
fortified house who pacified some corner of Cornwall or Wales a couple of 
hundred years after the Romans left Britain to endure what became known as 
the Dark Ages.

He is mentioned in several ancient poems and annals quoted in 10th century 
histories, but whoever he was his exploits were unrecognisedly embroidered 
by Medieval monks and jongleurs who embellished the stories into mythic 
tales of courtly grace and valour to the glory of God.

Still, British archeologists, especially on television, search for the site 
of "King Arthur's Court". The latest findings, such as they are, are on 
show in The Real King Arthur (ABC 7:30pm Sunday).

If big armoured steel platforms fitted with enormous guns for pounding 
other countries' fleets, fortifications and towns are your consuming 
interest, then The Big Picture: The Battleships (ABC 9:30pm 
Tuesdays) should be just the ticket for you.

From the age of wooden ships to the age of air power, the battleship 
dominated the waves. This new series by Peter Butt examines the evolution 
of the modern battleship and its role in the various major wars of the last 
century or so.

Episode one, A Thirst For Blood And Iron, deals with the changeover 
from wooden vessels to iron and the change in warfare that it allowed.

The somewhat unusual crime drama series Mortimer's Law begins a 
repeat run this week at the rather uninviting hour of midnight (ABC 12:00pm 
Wednesdays).

The plot is based around a London barrister (played by Amanda Root) who 
chucks in her London job to become the coroner in a small Welsh town. The 
resemblance to Sea Change is purely superficial, however.

In Mortimer's Law, the emphasis is on crime drama rather than folksy 
comedy-romance.

Five years ago, Whitehouse intern, Monica Lewinsky's relationship with US 
President Clinton became public with the aid of the Republicans, to cause 
Clinton and the Democrats as much political grief as possible.

Her instant notoriety was a boon to stand-up comedians, but did not advance 
Ms Lewinsky's career much. Her value to the Republicans diminished as time 
went on.

Anyway, Monica now says that she'd do anything to have her anonymity back. 
So how does she propose to achieve that state?

Well, she could simply drop out of sight, get a job somewhere and avoid the 
media. But she is in the USA, so instead she goes on TV in her very own 
special on cable channel HBO, Monica In Black And White answering 
such questions as "How does it feel to be the blow job queen of America?"

Such significant current affairs programming is obviously a ratings winner 
so the national broadcaster has picked it up (ABC 9:30pm Thursday).

According to the ABC, "Monica in Black and White offers a 
sympathetic insight into how Monica Lewinsky has dealt with her unexpected 
fame, by giving her the chance to put her side of the story".