TV programs worth watching —
Sun July 21 - Sat July 27

Victor Hugo was originally a Royalist, but he became an ardent democrat. 
His great novels Les Miserables (The Wretched Ones) and Les Travailleurs de 
la Mer (The Toilers of the Sea) were not written in France but in self-
imposed exile in the British islands of Jersey and Guernsey.

The climax of Les Misrables takes place during the revolutionary 
upheavals of 1848. Some years ago I saw a French film of the novel that was 
shot as a co-production with the German Democratic Republic. I can still 
remember the proliferation of red flags on the buildings during the climax.

According to SBS, "the story of Les Misrables has been adapted in 
various forms 26 times", including another French version in 1995 with 
Jean-Paul Belmondo and a very forgettable one in 1998 with Liam Neeson.

Now comes a French-made four-part drama series, Les Misrables  (SBS 
8.30pm Sundays) starring Grard Depardieu as Jean Valjean, condemned as a 
criminal for being poor, and John Malkovich as his relentless pursuer 
Javert.

The large cast also includes Jeanne Moreau, Charlotte Gainsbourg (as 
Fantine), Christian Clavier (Thnardier), Enrico Lo Verso (Marius) and 
Virginie Ledoyen (as Cosette). I have not been able to preview it (SBS did 
not send out tapes) but I suggest it be approached with caution.

The series is directed by Jose Dayan, written for the screen by Didier 
Decoin and produced by Jean-Pierre Gurin. This is the creative team 
responsible for the uninspired French adaptation of The Count of Monte 
Cristo, also starring Dpardieu, which was chiefly notable for the 
complete absence of any attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the book.

The Great Plague of 1665, killed one in three of the city of London's 
inhabitants. Over 200,000 of the well-to-do fled London when the plague 
hit. The poor, however, were forbidden to leave the city, lest they carry 
the contagion with them.

In The Great Plague (ABC 9:20pm Sunday), producer John Toba and 
director Justin Hardy have dramatised the story of the poverty-stricken 
inhabitants of one London street during this catastrophe, using information 
gleaned from the archives of London's churches.

The street is Cock and Key Alley, in the Parish of St Dunstan in the West. 
It was one of the many dark and dismal alleys between Fleet St and the 
Thames and was home to 30 families who struggled to make ends meet.

When the plague finally disappeared with the arrival of the cold weather, 
12 out of the 20 houses had been affected and 36 men, women and children 
were dead. It's an original idea for a television docudrama, but I have not 
seen it and so cannot say how well they have succeeded.

In the quest for original variations on the detective story, authors have 
used almost every type of detective — blind, grossly fat, elderly female, 
Belgian, Japanese, Indian, Native American, Russian, French, you name it.

Detectives have been attached to the police, have been private enquiry 
agents, lawyers, Treasury agents, coroners. They have been placed in 
ancient China, medieval Winchester and late Victorian London.

One of the more common variation is to make the detective the medical 
examiner, a practice that began with the cases of Dr Thorndyke. With the 
specialisation of modern police work, it is a little harder today to 
involve the medical examiner in all aspects of the case but authors still 
try.

Silent Witness had to strain at times, but still managed to have its 
heroine poke her nose into the police's part of the investigation without 
losing credibility altogether.

Dangerfield (ABC 2:00pm Mondays) on the other hand, gets Nigel 
Havers, as the doctor providing medical backup in police investigations, 
into the most unbelievable scrapes. However, it is all done with such an 
amiable disregard for logic or credibility that it is virtually churlish to 
complain that it simply couldn't happen that way.

The new four-part series Finest Hour, screening on The Big 
Picture (ABC 8:30pm Wednesdays), claims to be "hard hitting". One would 
not have thought there could be that much left unsaid about the air defence 
of Britain against Goering's Luftwaffe in 1940.

The ABC, however, says "the series looks objectively at the machinations 
and betrayals of the time, highlighting lesser known and less-palatable 
incidents (many of which were originally subject to censorship)". Golly.

There is a lot of man-made junk floating around the Earth these days — 
from astronaut's gloves to nuts and bolts and large pieces of shattered 
satellites. Space: The Final Junkyard (ABC 11:00pm Wednesday) has 
some (in fact, lots) of scary information about this orbiting litter.

A screw, "floating" above the Earth, is actually travelling at about 17,000 
kms per hour. As the program shows, if that hits something solid like a 
satellite or a space station, the impact is catastrophic.

Several satellites are already believed to have been shattered by such 
impacts. In fact there is even a theory (the "Cascade Theory") that says 
that as these bits of junk impact on other space material like satellites 
and shatter them into a thousand pieces which go on to impact on other 
space objects the Earth will eventually be ringed by an impenetrable 
curtain of this lethal litter.

Suggesting future space travel could become impossible.

As those of you who have been watching Walking With Beasts (ABC 
8.00pm Thursdays) will know, it is if anything even more fascinating than 
its predecessor Walking With Dinosaurs, and just as cleverly 
conceived and executed.

It's the computer-animated account of the evolution of the mammals, with 
some pretty astonishing animals emerging along the way. This week's episode 
begins to get closer to out rime, with the emergence of the hominid 
Australopithecus, a species of ape that spends more time on the ground, and 
can walk on two legs.

The idea of teaming Richard Wilson of One Foot In The Grave fame 
with Stephanie Cole who played the waspish Diana in Waiting For God 
must have seemed like a good one. They are both accomplished comic 
actors and their new sitcom Life As We Know It (ABC 8:00pm Fridays) 
could certainly have been worse.

But I sincerely trust the quote from People that the ABC is using to 
plug the show is hyperbole and not fact: "...the best new sitcom of the 
year." If that were true it would be a sad prospect indeed.

Both stars recreate their previous roles but in a more mellow mood. The 
dialogue is peppered with jokes that are a bit obvious and lack the 
inspiration of the comic business in One Foot In The Grave.

That is probably because, although it has One Foot In The Grave's 
director, its script is by the writer of the much inferior Waiting For 
God.