TV programs worth watching
Sun March 30 — Sat April 5

When I was a boy, human evolution was reasonably straight forward: 
humans evolved from apes (or "monkeys") into homo sapiens and set out to 
occupy the world. There were the awkward pre-human fossils to explain away, 
such as Pekin Man and Java Man, but it seemed to make sense.

There was even a "missing link" between apes and humans, Piltdown Man. Or 
there was until Piltdown Man was shown to be a deliberate hoax.

Today, thanks to the extraordinary amount of work done in the Rift Valley 
of Kenya and in China, we know that the ancestors of human beings not only 
began to walk upright about three million years ago, but that they also 
began their expansion out of Africa before the appearance of homo sapiens.

In fact, as the three-part documentary series The Human Odyssey (SBS 
7.30pm Sunday) shows, "mankind did not develop along a single, linear 
route; often different species lived alongside one another".

Episode one, It Began in Africa, deals with the origins of mankind 
as a species in the African Savannah. Episode two, next week, looks at 
Pekin Man, an early hominid, an ancestor of homo sapiens' predecessor homo 
erectus, who left Africa about two million years ago and headed for China.

This week's episode of Mark Twain (ABC 9.30 pm Sundays), Ken Burns' 
four-part tribute to the great American author, humorist and social 
satirist, takes up the story of Samuel Clemens at age 32.

Clemens, having worked as a Mississippi riverboat pilot, prospector, 
lecturer and newspaper reporter was just starting to make a name for 
himself as Mark Twain.

When he returned from a trip to Europe in 1867 he had two new ambitions: he 
wanted to publish his first book, and he hoped to finally find someone to 
marry. These he achieved when he married the beautiful Olivia Langdon and 
had The Innocents Abroad published.

His 1873 novel The Gilded Age was a biting satire on the greed and get-
rich-quick fever of the era, and yet in many ways Clemens own life 
personified it: He loved money and the comfort and luxury it could buy.

Next he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a celebration of boyhood 
in a small Southern town in the time of slavery, superstition, riverboats 
and dreams of adventure.

Then followed Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, The 
Prince and the Pauper and in 1883 his masterpiece, Huckleberry 
Finn.

Cultural genocide has always been understood by imperialism as a 
particularly potent weapon. The English Kings in their conquest of the rest 
of the British Isles certainly appreciated it.

As a result of their efforts to stamp out the culture of the various 
conquered parts of Britain and Ireland, languages like Manx and Cornish 
have already died and Gaelic has shrunk back into its island heartland.

The ten-part documentary series The Sea Kingdoms (SBS 7.30pm 
Tuesdays) explores how the connecting sea has helped shape the distinctive 
character of the inhabitants around the western coast of the British Isles 
from Stornoway in the Hebrides to the west of Wales, Ireland and Cornwall.

Two-thousand years ago the farms, fortresses and harbours of these islands 
echoed to the speech of the Celts and it is this rich culture and history 
which forms the focus of this series narrated by writer Alistair Moffat.

I still find the new series of The Office (ABC 10:00pm Tuesdays) 
more unpleasant than funny (its depiction of a thoroughly obnoxious office 
manager is too true to be amusing — he makes you wince or cringe rather 
than laugh).

I realise, however, that this may be a generational thing: my eldest son 
(aged 33, "into" film and media, no mean slouch himself as a film critic) 
tells me that "The Office is the best thing on TV". So you had better watch 
it for yourselves.

Continuing this week's evolutionary bent, Insect Hunters, the second 
episode of David Attenborough's The Life Of Mammals (ABC 8:30pm 
Wednesdays), deals with the way the first placental mammals evolved, as 
shrew-like insect eaters.

About 50 million years ago some mammals broadened their diet like today's 
hedgehogs and armadillos that mix their insects with fruit and birds' eggs.

This program also looks at how one mammal — probably when the dinosaurs 
still roamed — took to the air. Today, the earth holds a bewildering array 
of insect eating bats including one, in New Zealand, that has retraced its 
origins and returned to the ground to forage like a shrew.

The nuclear danger of the 1950s produced an intriguing array of films from 
Hollywood: there were right-wing paranoid fantasies like It Conquered The 
World (if I remember correctly that's the one where the military officer 
who has been "taken over" by the alien gets past the armed soldier on the 
gate of an army base in the desert by simply announcing "There's been an 
uprising of Communists in this area. Don't let anyone in!").

There were bizarre warnings against the dangers of nuclear testing such as 
Them! and The Incredible Shrinking Man, and there were even pleas for 
tolerance, understanding and peace (backed up by threats of our total 
destruction if we did not comply) such as The Day The Earth Stood Still.

And there were films that simply fed on the prevailing paranoia, films like 
Howard Hawks' brilliant 1951 production, The Thing From Another World 
(ABC 10.30pm Saturday).

The film is based very loosely on John W Campbell Jr's prize-winning short 
story Who Goes There? In the original the alien is able to change 
shape at will and mimic perfectly the various members of the crew it has 
killed, so that the survivors do not know who is friend and who is 
murderous alien.

In the film, still set on an isolated Arctic research station peopled by 
scientists and military personnel, the alien is a seven foot tall humanoid, 
a blood-drinking member of the carrot family no less, played by James 
Arness.

Former Editor Christian Nyby is credited as director, but the film abounds 
in touches characteristic of the directing style of producer Hawks: "rapid-
fire overlapping dialogue; humour in the midst of turmoil; a male universe 
where men respect each other's talents and rank".

There's a typically Hawksian heroine, "an intelligent, strong, funny woman 
(Margaret Sheridan) who's passed the test and is allowed to pal around with 
the boys"; and a typically Hawksian setting, "men working together under 
pressure, with each (professionals all) contributing his singular skills to 
get the difficult task done" (Danny Peary, Guide for the Film 
Fanatic).

Most Hawks films are well worth watching. This is one of them.