TV programs Worth Watching
Sun August 25 — Sat August 31

As Mr Darcy said at the Mereton Ball, "every savage can dance". And not 
just savages. All nationalities dance.

Whether they emphasised their hands and their hips or demonstrated their 
athletic ability and strength in leather boots, all developed intricate 
rhythms and distinctive steps.

Fascinatin' Rhythm: The Story Of Tap (ABC 2.00pm Sunday) deals with 
one of the most exciting and expressive forms of artistic physical 
expression: tap dancing.

Tap's historical sources are in the clog dances of northern England, in the 
jigs, reels, and flings of Ireland and Scotland, and in the rhythmic foot 
stamping of African dances. In 19th-century minstrel shows in the US, 
American blacks and their white imitators stylised and fused these elements 
into a new popular style of dance.

By the end of the century there were two distinct forms: buck-and-wing and 
soft-shoe. Buck-and-wing was active and fast and was danced in wooden-soled 
shoes; soft-shoe was relaxed, smooth, and danced in soft-soled shoes.

By 1925 the two varieties had largely merged, and metal taps were attached 
to heels and toes to produce a more audible tap. With its intricate rhythms 
and fancy footwork, tap was ideally suited to performance on stage, and the 
Broadway musicals of the period displayed many great talents.

In the '30s and '40s, the Hollywood musical brought the best of tap to the 
world, but almost always performed by whites. Astaire and Rogers, Eleanor 
Powell, Jimmy Cagney, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, Donald 
O'Connor.

The great black exponents of tap, like Bill Robinson, the Nicholas Brothers 
and Tip, Tap and Toe were restricted to supporting acts or occasional all-
black movies. Robinson found himself partnered with child star Shirley 
Temple in four musicals for 20th Century Fox.

With the demise of the big studio musicals, tap went into decline, but has 
been revived in recent years by blockbuster stage and television hits like 
Stomp!, Riverdance and Tap Dogs. Suddenly, percussive dance is big news 
once again.

Made by the BBC, Fascinatin' Rhythm: The Story of Tap celebrates 
just how glamorous and influential tap has been and explores the reasons 
why it faded away. It reveals the full complexity and and sophistication of 
tap as a form of dance and a form of music.

Is capitalism decadent or what? The US pornography industry is worth $10 
billion a year. As SBS says in its publicity for Cutting Edge: American 
Porn (SBS 8.30pm Tuesday): "It's one of the hottest industries in 
America. Easier to order at home than a pizza, bigger than rock music, it's 
arguably the most profitable enterprise in cyberspace."

Where there are big profits you will find big corporations like AT&T 
seeking to corner those profits for themselves. But the explosive growth of 
sexually explicit entertainment has handed right-wing reaction a powerful 
weapon in support of censorship.

The forces that support George Bush, the Republican and Religious Right, 
the gun nuts and homophobes, racists and "right-to-lifers", are using the 
proliferation of hard core porn to attack basic civil liberties in the US 
(and after the US, Australia).

People who have no problem with rampant police violence, gun culture, war 
as entertainment (both as TV entertainment and for real) affect to be 
shocked and horrified by depictions of sex and use the public concern they 
themselves arouse through a compliant mass media to attack the "degenerate 
liberalism" of the left.

American Porn chronicles not only how pornography has been 
prosecuted in the past — but how it may soon be prosecuted again. Porn 
moguls are nervous — and so too are mainstream companies. Yahoo! for 
example, withdrew its bid to open a virtual sex shop following an anti-porn 
campaign waged by the right-wing American Family Association.

As if writing for television was not subject to enough pressures already — 
network sensitivity to "viewer demand", the desire for ratings even on the 
part of public broadcasters, the wish to prolong every series say beyond 
its logical conclusion in the hope of it becoming a "franchise" — the 
producers Hal and Di McElroy have come up with a new gimmick.

For their new drama series on SBS, Twenty-four Seven (SBS 7.30pm 
Wednesdays) "viewers will be able to interact directly with the program 
each week by voting online or via SMS text on a choice of three storylines 
for the next episode". Ho hum.

SBS bravely describes this gimmick as "a ground-breaking concept in 
television drama [that] gives the viewer the chance to be creative and 
intimate with Twenty-four Seven and its cast". Well, not quite, I 
think.

The drama itself is the usual guff, about a "team of talented and energetic 
young journalists" churning out "the hottest new title in the magazine 
market — unique, funky and vocal".

We are promised that the series will reveal the team's "ambitions, affairs, 
humour, emotions and obsessions". All of them, I suspect, in every episode.

Twenty-four Seven will be written on Monday (following the results 
of the audience vote), shot on a Tuesday and shown the next day. I can't 
wait.

Merle Oberon was one of the big stars of the '30s and '40s. She had high 
cheek bones and almond eyes.

She worked as a dance hostess until being "discovered" by British producer 
Alexander Korda in 1932. Studio publicity gave out a biography claiming 
that she was born in Hobart of wealthy parents and educated in India on the 
death of her father.

True Stories: Trouble With Merle (ABC 10.00pm Thursday) looks at 
whether this bio was invented to cover up the scandalous fact that Korda's 
new star was in fact Anglo-Indian, or worse!

Merle Oberon's racial and class antecedents are of no significance today, 
if they ever were. But the racism of the British and US film industries had 
a profound affect on the perceptions of millions of people — and still 
does.

Actress Leah Purcell's directorial debut, Black Chicks Talking, 
which was voted most popular film at this year's Brisbane International 
Film Festival, will be seen this week in About Us (SBS 8.30pm 
Friday).

Based on Purcell's book of the same name, Black Chicks Talking 
invites a group of Aboriginal women to talk about the issues that have 
affected them and their families' lives while meeting for dinner over 
exquisite Indigenous gourmet cuisine.

Themes of culture, identity and denial run throughout their stories, a 
legacy of past government "Protection" Acts and policies. Purcell, an 
acclaimed Aboriginal performer, delivers a dynamic portrait of contemporary 
Indigenous women.

"To me", she says, "Black Chicks Talking is funky. It's sexy, it's 
fun, it's new ground. It's young black women looking good and talking 
strong and it just blows every stereotypical viewpoint away."