MEDIA LIST
danger of losing all the popularity they ever had. This. for the insatiable few. isa repeat of their first-ever series. made in 1969.
I Selling Scotland (Scottish)9— l(lpm. While other countries place severe restrictionson the rights offoreignersto own land. Scotland is unique in allowing large tracts of land to be bought upby companies registered in the world's tax havens. The estimable George Rosie asks ifit is time legal action were taken to restrict such purchases.
. W T ‘ . ‘ ‘ .\ o -. "75% ‘7’)?" 5.: 53'" ‘ o V}, ~ . y. ‘i -: .9: . : ~ ‘ "Wk . t I, a.
_." .gf .‘ o '93" fl
' ' v“. - ‘4 i O
I A Love In Germ Andrez Wajda‘s 1983 study of the wartime romance between married woman Hanna Schygulla and Polish prisoner Piotr Lysak begins with the arrival in the village. 40 years after the war. oftwostrangers. Slowly the tragic events are pieced together. with the villagers' reluctance to discuss the past acting as a telling metaphor of the guilt-ridden German psyche.
FRIDAY 1
I The Left Hand of God (BBCZ) 6—7.25pm. China. 1947: Humphrey Bogart isthe Catholic priest who earns the respect of the local community. despite the distrust ofthe local doctor. and the hostility ofthe feared warlord. Yang. Cameo appearance by Diego Maradona.
I The Art Of Pleasing People ((‘4) 8—8.30pm. Another chance to witness the packaging and promotion of Wet. Wet. Wet. who when HTV began to filmthis programme were about to release their first single.
I Hysteria 2((‘4)1(l.3(lpm—12.3(lam.
' Marking World AIDS Day. a two-hour comedy benefit directed by Stephen Fry. and starring many of the names familiar from the various policemen‘s balls— Cleese. Atkinson. Enfield and Henry.
And shy. retiring Robbie Coltrane discusses the benefits of Bovril with Jerry Hall (the authoress. no less).
SATURDAY 2
I Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (BBCl ) 8—9.5(lpm. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are the charming. playful outlaws who seem to rob banks more for the fun ofit than the money they can get away with. A nostalgic and sanitised. yet occasionally enchanting vision of the old West. directed by George Roy 1 till.
I Hail the Conquering Hero ( BBCZ)
l 1.3flpm— 1 . 15am. Made in 194-1. another successful comic debunking ofthe American obsession with upstanding heroism by Preston Sturgcs. Eddie Bracken is the army reject who returns to his home town only to find himself regarded as a hero.
lflThe Getaway (Scottish) 11.4(lpm—2am. Typically nihilistic. over-the-top Peckinpah tale of a couple — Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw — who attempt to find success and happiness in armed robbery.
SUNDAY 3
I The Play of Light (C4) 4—4.3(lpm. 'I‘heArt ofthe Western World series examinesthe creative life of sixteenth-century Venice. a city awash with artistic genius.
I The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission (Scottish) 7. 15—8.5()pm. Inferior but watchable sequel to the war epic has a mainly new bunch ofpsychopaths unleashed from Death Row to get out there and kill a few Nazis more. Well. a few thousand more. in fact.
a I Young Guns (BBCZ) 10.05—1 1.35pm. Coppola‘s Brat Pack movie par excellence. a homage to the youth films of the 50s. isa simple tale of conflict between the rich kids ofTulsa and the resentful Greasers from the wrong side of the tracks. Starring
Mat Dillon. Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise. with a type-cast cameo appearance by Tom Waits.
I The Birds (C4) 1(lpm—12. 15am. Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor star in Hitchcock‘s schlock-apocalypse. which was launched in 1960 with the attention-grabbing. apparently ungrammatical slogan The Birds Is Coming. You'll never look your budgie in the eye again.
I Everyman: The Politics of Life (BBCI) 10.25—11.05pm. Recent legislation has raised the issue of abortion to the top of the political agenda in the US. Everyman visits the town of Fort Wayne. Indiana. where the only legal abortion clinic. is picketed round the clock by up to 70 ‘pro-life‘ activists.
I The South Bank Show (Scottish) l().4()pm—12.1()am. Profile oftheatre director Peter Brook. See also Signals. Wed 6 below.
MONDAY 4
I Through the Looking Glass (BBCZ) 8.3(i—9pm. The history of fashion reaches the present day with a look at ‘lifestylc‘ fashion. pioneered by Next. The programme will conclude with an ‘important announcement‘. when the colour ofthe next decade. no less, will be declared. Let's hope it‘s burgundy.
I Parting Glances (C4) 12.()5—1.45am. A sympathetic study of yuppie love in Manhattan‘s gay community. where a triangular relationship is disrupted when one of the three finds he has AIDS. A low-budget piece by Bill Sherwood, who eschews facile moralising. choosing instead to explore the psychology ofthe three leading characters.
TUESDAY 5
I Made In Latin America: Love and Power (BBCZ) 9.30— 10.30pm. The role of women in a continent virtually synonymous with the term machismo is discussed by Manuel Puig. author of Kiss of the Spider Woman. while poet Gioconda Belli assesses the position of women in post-revolutionary Nicaragua. I One Night Stand (C4) 1()—l().3()pm. The first in a season of performances by American stand-up comedians highlights Rita Rudner.
I First Tuesday (Scottish) 10.35—11.35pm. While the strength of the Jewish lobby in the US ensures that official government policy welcomes all Jewish would-be emigrants from the Soviet Union. this documentary shows the reality. as ever. is somewhat different. It concentrates on one group ofJews who were allowed out ofthe USSR as the US had promised them visas. But the promise was not kept. and
so they remain stranded in a small Italian town.
WEDNESDAY 6
I The Shining (Scottish) lil.35pm—1.2(lam. Here‘s Jacky. hamming it up as is his wont in the role of a caretaker who. underthe influence of some murders in the building he inhabits. turns a little bit strange and begins to threaten his family. Not so much adapted as mutilated from the Stephen King novel by Stanley Kubrick.
I Signals (C4) 9. lS—ltlpm. A preview of Peter Brooks' acclaimed adaptation of The Mahabharata. to be shown in a specially-shot six-hour version on Saturday 9.
ITrain of Dreams ((74) 10—1 1 .45pm. A delinquent 17-year-old gradually undergoes rehabilitation in reform school under the guidance of Robin Willi- er. a caring teacher. By Canadian directorJohn N. Smith.
THURSDAY 7
I The State of Europe: Driven to Destruction (BBC2)8—8.3()pm. While Britons clamour for bigger and ‘better' roads for their cars, other countries are introducing stricter controls on private transport. The programme visits Athens. where up to ten people die each day in summer from a combination of heat and smog, goes to Holland. where there are plans to reduce the foal number of cars in the country. and finds a possible solution in solar-powered transport — there are already 2(XX)such cars on the roads ofSwitzerland.
I Scottish Books (Scottish)
11.05—1 1.35pm. Jenny Brown and a cluster ofguests recommend the best literary buys for Christmas.
I Frankenstein and the Monsterfrom Hell (Scottish) 12.20—2. 10am. An injured lunatic is turned into a crazed apeman by the Baron (Peter Cushing). who. by 1973 when this predictably absurd Hammer effort was made. really should have learnt his lesson.
RADIO
As Berlin convulses and the world commemorates fifty years since the outbreak of the war, it is a sensitive moment to send C.P. Taylor’s humanitarian cri de coeur, Good, quivering overthe airwaves. BBC Scotland director, Stewart Conn, knew and worked with Taylor in the playwright’s native Glasgow, directing several of his dramas for the stage and for radio.
Good is a momentous play with a human face. Accompanying a likeable man into his gradual and all-too-believable involvement with the activities of the Third Reich, the play approaches the horror of the Holocaust in a manner both understanding and entertaining. ‘lt’s a
haunting play,’ says Conn. ‘It’s depressing beyond individual comprehension. We leave Hadler at the gates of Auschwitz. Yet, it doesn’t depress me, I can go through that wall and out the other side. It chills me, but it doesn’t depress me.‘
The play has not been adapted for radio as such, although certain changes have been made to some of the stagier moments. Throughout the play, Hadler is haunted by music in his head which, as Conn points out, is a perfect radio device. Only the final piece of music is real, played by a band of prisoners at the pretty little station at the end of the line for the cattle-trucks. To try and achieve a different quality, Conn commissioned an orchestration of the Schubert march and had it played live in the studio.
‘I think that he is a writer,’ says Conn, stressing the word, ‘and he himself
doesn’t say, ‘this is exclusively forTV or radio orthe stage.’ What means most to me is what a play says — one does whatever one can to make it radiophonlc.’ Good is broadcast on Radio 3 at 9.25pm on 8 December. More recent history that shook the world is explored in the Radio One series, Starmakers And Svengalis, which last week unravelled the knotted truth about Brian Epstein, The Man Who Discovered The Beatles (and Cilla Black and Gerry and the Pacemakers). The first meeting between Epstein and the Fab Four was not auspicious. After seeing them in the Cavern Club and finding them “rather scruftily dressed in a rather attractive way,’ Epstein invited the boys round for a meeting. Paul McCartney forgot all about it and was in the bath when the call came. When he eventually turned up, Epstein was unimpressed: ‘He may be late,’ said
George Harrison, ‘but he’s very clean.‘ More than just a celebration, this was
a clever combination of archive interviews, recent comment from those who knew Epstein, and the rough-cut sounds of the time. Son of a middle-class Jewish family, public school educated, Epstein inhabited a different world from his proteges. Asked what he enjoyed about being a manager he referred to the development of the artist and his ‘tremendous onalty.‘ ‘The dependence is gratifying,‘ he said. He might have been talking about a favourite greyhound. By ‘67, the tables had turned. Beatlemania was getting silly and Epstein found himself trailing after a phenomenon he could no longer control. In the middle of one of their Eastern trips, The Beatles were told of his suicide and sounded too spaced-out to care. (Julie Morrice)
The List 24 November — 7 December 1989 63