TV Programs worth watching
Sun 3 November — Sat 9 November

Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth won the prestigious Whitbread 
First Novel Award. Channel Four has rushed the TV adaptation of White 
Teeth (ABC 8.30pm Sundays) into production before the public forgets 
about the award hoopla.

The English media cannot decide whether it is a comedy or a drama, but this 
tale of inter-racial marriage and friendship in the '70s is at least 
intriguing, but on the strength of epsiode one, nothing more. It may 
improve.

The 1944 English movie A Canterbury Tale (ABC 10:55pm Tuesday) is 
acclaimed filmmakers' Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's much 
misunderstood tribute to the cultural and personal ties that supposedly 
united the two wartime allies Britain and the USA.

The film begins in Chaucer's time, with a shot of a hooded falcon on the 
wrist of a medieval pilgrim. Erwin Hillier's superb camerawork follows the 
graceful bird as it soars aloft on speedy wings. When it becomes a mere 
speck, it turns and comes gliding back, revealing itself to now be a 
Spitfire.

Sheila Sim is the London shopgirl turned landgirl who arrives in her 
designated village at night in the company of a British tank sergeant 
(Dennis Price) and an American GI (John Sweet).

When she has glue sprayed in her hair by a mysterious assailant, the three 
resolve to track the culprit down, bringing them into contact with the 
local magistrate and amateur historian (Eric Portman).

Variety noted that "Four miracles occur in this story, one to each of the 
four principal characters". Variety also commented, "Here is rare beauty".

British critic and filmmaker Basil Wright, however, observed in 1972: "To 
most people, the intentions of the filmmakers remained highly mysterious". 
However accurate Wright may be, A Canterbury Tale remains a very 
interesting and unusual work.

John Sweet's Yank is a very uncommon creation, finding an affinity with the 
local village craftsmen working with wood. Worth watching I feel.

The anthrax attacks in the USA last October have well and truly slipped 
from the front pages to the more obscure parts of the print media. 
Generally accepted as being either the genuine work of a nutter or a 
sinister back-up provocation intended to keep up "terrorist" paranoia in 
the US, the anthrax scare faded quickly when it became clear that the 
anthrax in question was not of Middle Eastern origin but was developed in 
the USA itself.

In fact, the particular strain has been identified as one developed at the 
U S Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in 
Frederick, Maryland.

Steven J Hatfill, until recently an employee of USAMRIID, has so far 
figured prominently in the FBI's investigation of the anthrax incidents, in 
which letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to prominent people. 
Hatfill has reportedly been interviewed at least four or five times by the 
FBI, been given a lie-detector test and had his apartment searched.

Nevertheless, the FBI stoutly maintains that he "is not a suspect". This 
same Hatfill, who lectures to US Embassy and Defence personnel on bio-war 
defence systems, in the '70s served with the US Army Institute for Military 
Assistance, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, while simultaneously, his 
resumi says, serving in the Special Air Squadron (SAS) of the white 
supremacist regime in Rhodesia.

He then claims to have attended medical school in Rhodesia from 1978 to 
1984, before moving to South Africa, where he completed "various military-
medical assignments" while supposedly obtaining three master's degrees.

Hatfield also happily admits to serving in the Selous Scouts, white 
Rhodesia 's notorious counter-insurgency force, a murderous instrument of 
state terrorism used by the racist Smith regime to kill supporters of 
independence in what would become Zimbabwe.

All this may have nothing to do with the anthrax attacks in the US, but a 
lot of people in the scientific community in the US think it does. 
Nevertheless, a year after the investigation began, the anthrax terrorist 
is still loose.

As The Big Picture: The Hunt For The Anthrax Killer (ABC 8.30pm 
Wednesday) shows, the chief suspect has moved from being an Iraqi terrorist 
to a lone bio-bomber to a military insider. The FBI has uncovered a chaotic 
system of secret weapons programs.

But despite engaging a new generation of detective techniques and an 
unlikely group of detectives — colourful characters like Paul Leim, a 
pioneering microbiologist, Shakespearean scholar Don Foster and Dave Franz, 
a scientist turned forensic biologist and former army Colonel — the FBI 
appears to have hit a brick wall.

Are they being prevented from investigating further because the culprit is 
being protected? Or have the FBI run out of ideas?

The fashion for historical detective fiction grows apace. There are now 
ancient Egyptian, ancient Roman and ancient Chinese detectives; medieval 
English detectives abound (Cherith Baldry even uses Geoffrey Chaucer as a 
spy and crime solver).

Thomas Pitt (and his high-born wife) solve crimes in Victorian England, as 
does Sergeant Cribb. In fact almost no era of English or world history has 
been left unmined by detective authors in search of a new milieu in which 
to set their plots.

On television, pathology lecturer Dr Joseph Bell and young Arthur Conan 
Doyle himself became detectives in the series of adventures Dr Bell And Mr 
Doyle. And now comes an excellent four-part series Foyle's War (ABC 
8.30pm Fridays), in which Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle 
investigates murders and the like on the south coast of England during WW2.

Created and written by Anthony Horowitz with a clever (and convincing) 
ability to relate the plots to the atmosphere, events and milieu of the War 
at home, the series has been directed by Jeremy Silbertson with an 
understated skill that is quite refreshing.

In fact, understatement might almost be a theme of the series: the 
performances, David Odd's excellent photography and especially Jim Parker's 
very effective music are all pleasingly understated.

Foyle is played by Michael Kitchen as a shrewd, experienced and credible 
copper. At the beginning of the series he believes he is wasted doing mere 
police work and wants to be allowed to take a commission in the army. His 
boss, Asst Commissioner Sommers, (Edward Fox) won't hear of it.

As compensation, Sommers gives Foyle a woman driver from the Armoured 
Transport Corps, Sam (played by the extraordinarily named Honeysuckle 
Weeks). Sam, as played by Weeks, is delightfully in period: rosy cheeked, 
frank, inquisitive, not at all overawed by her new boss — the very picture 
of the young '40s woman given the opportunity by the War to step out of her 
designated domestic role (in Sam's case, a village vicarage).

Best of all about Foyle's War is that the plots are intelligent 
rather than merely ingenious, the supporting characters are interesting and 
the supporting cast is excellent (in episode one, Robert Hardy, David 
Horovitch, Rosamunde Pike — who could have stepped out of a 1940s movie — 
and Philip Whitchurch, amongst others).