TELEVISION LISTINGS
I Unplugged Special—Paul McCartney (Channel 4) 7—8pm. A special concert I featuring Macea and the band playing an i acoustic set of old Beatles hits and rock 'n' roll numbers. I You Only Live Twice (Scottish) 8— H). 15pm. Btit you get repeated at least : seven times. Sean Connery in peak Bond form trying to avert Armageddon and foil those nasty SI’ECI‘RIF guys. I Clockwise ( BBCI ) S 9.30pm. John ; (‘leese plays the obsessively punctual ‘ headmaster Brian Stimpson in this uneven ; farce. Trying to make it to Norwich fora conference involves Stimpson in a series of i disasters and mishaps that are amusing I andirritatingbyturn.
I The ‘Savage' Strikes Back; Hunters And Bombers (Channel 4) 9—10pm. The lnnu tribe. original inhabitants of Labradorin nor tit-east (‘anada fight a huge expansion of the local airbase which would threaten their culture and way oflife.
TUESDAY 27
I Outside Time (Channel 4) 8.3ll—9pm. The third in the series on Celtic mythsin
Britain tells the story of Pryderi and Manawydan. which introduces the legend of King Arthur. I BearWindow: Phantom OlJoy (Channel 4) 9—9.45pm. Roland Joffe‘s latest film City ()fJoy. set in Calcutta. is the centre of a controversy accusing it of neo-eolonialism. racism and media exploitation of poverty. The filmmakers have responded with charges of repressive Government censorship and intimidation. Now view on . . . I Voices Within (BBCl ) 9.30—1 lpm. Tom Conti and Shelley Long star in the first episode of a two-part thriller (there‘s alot of it about) about a woman who developed eighteen different personalities as a result of physical and mental abuse during childhood. Part two tomorrow. I Legacy (Scottish) 10.40—1 l .4llpm. Continuing the series on ancient Civilisations, Michael Wood visits China. travelling from Peking to Taishan. the
sacred mountain.
l WEDNESDAY 28
i Isixthirtysomething (Channel-4)
? 6.3(l—7pm. Ann Bryson and Maria
: McErlane introduce the irreverant arts and entertainment strand. taking an
i acerbic look at the latest US sensation
LNewJack City.
I I
' party hosted by Richard Cawley of
. SLIO. 15pm. The story of the suave and
charmer in the TV adaptation of the play
'. Millwall. 3 I The Golden Girls (Channel 4)
father while she is helping out at the
I Rough Guide to Careers (BBC2) 6.45—7.25pm. The show seems to have abandoned any semblance of reality of late. Tonight offers you tips on how to become a motor-racing driver.
I The Golden Child (Scottish) 8—9.50pm. Eddie Murphy stars in a daft fantasy thriller as a child-finder hired by aTibetan to track down a holy youth kidnapped by villainous Charles Dance.
I Out (Channel 4) 9—10pm. Featuringa trio of reports on: housing issues affecting the gay and lesbian community. gay attitudes to pets (l'?), and a gay dinner
Options magazine. I Screenplay: Clubland (BBCZ)
charismatic Svengali Ajay who seduces and defrauds a succession ofyoung women. Paul Bhattarcharjee plays the
by Nick Perry. writer ofArrivederci
Ill—10.30pm. Rose discovers her natural
hospital.
I Nightingales (Channel 4) 11.05—11.35pm. After hours with the nightwatchmen in the surreal sitcom. Sarge is feeling poorly, so the boys call for Swan the lycanthropic medical student (OK. he's a werewolf).
THURSDAY 29
I The Wheel Of Fortune (Scottish) 8.30—9pm. The last edition ofthe quiz show series, hosted by Nicky Campbell and the woman with the teeth, Carol Smillie.
I Rising Damp (Channel 4) 8.3(l—9pm. Rigsby (Leonard Rossiter) invests in some new furniture, which attracts covetous looks.
I On The Line (BBCZ) 8.30—9pm. Prime Minister John Major is among the luminaries paying tribute to the cricket writer and broadcaster E.W. Swanton in a documentary special.
I The Travel Show (BBCZ) 9—9.30pm. Beating boredom in Belgium and the Lincolnshire Wolds are this week‘s assignments. Looks like the budget is running a little low.
I The Play On One: Eltie's Burning (BBCt) 9.30—10.45pm. Valerie Windsor‘s play stars Phyllis Logan and the late Gordon Jackson. Logan plays a young doctor faced with the case of an old woman burned by what she claims is spontaneous combustion. A friendship develops between the two women, united by their experiences of male domination.
I Hidden City (Channel 4) lOpm—midnight. Cassie Stuart stars as a film librarian uncovering a sinister secret concealed in London‘s past. Lecturer Charles Dance helps out. Original and powerful with political undertones.
I Capital News(BBCl) 10.45—1 1.30pm. The Washington Capital is embroiled in a battle between gossip columnist Miles Plato and wealthy businessman John Charles Dodd in the latest instalment of the less-than-convincing newspaper drama.
I NB (Scottish) 10.40—1 1.10pm. Up-to-date reports on the state of the arts in Scotland. with a Festival flavour.
I Festival Night Flyte (Scottish) 12.10—12.40am. David Rose hosts late-night festival chat.
V TV REVIEW
Ghannel Hopping
Lock up the Stolichnaya baby, and rebuild the Berlin wall, the Cold War is on again, official, full story and pix on all four channels. It was grimly appropriate that the tale ofthe downfall of the greatest global TV star of the last six years, bar none. should be documented so potently and immediately on the small screen. For once TV news played to its strengths, and in the process captured permanently the incompetence, insensitivity and insanity ofworld leaders.
Let‘s take this man Gennady Yanayev to start with, the seeming figurehead ofthe coup, all Brezhnevian cheekbones and steel grey hair. and not an endearing birthmark in sight. BBC footage closed up on the trembling fingers as he sweated buckets and mouthed the sinister banalities we became accustomed to in the age when glasnost was just a Muscovite double-glazing firm. ‘Comrade Gorbachev is receiving treatment,‘ he told the world. ‘We hope when he is better, he will return to office.‘ Like Leon Trotsky had a headache. Gennady?
Robert Moore of ITN described
Yanayev as a ‘hardliner, a grey man.‘
John Major, our own infinitely cuddlier Grey Man came out of Number Ten to be caught out in a rare moment ofspontaneous ineptness. John. looking like he‘d just emerged from a malfunctioning shower (maybe he‘d had a Cabinet meeting) informed us that events in the USSR had been an ‘unconstitutional seizure of power.‘ This suggested that he had found the phrase ‘eoup d‘e’tat‘ a little exotic, and had looked it up in a dictionary, but said little more about his grasp of the situation. How powerful the TV cameras can be, when they get their man unawares. . .
George Bush could confirm that. One minute the US news channels were showing him on happy holidays, swigging beer onboard his boat. The next he was blinking into the cameras and struggling for a few impromptu words. Now George isn‘t exactly known for his ability to choose the right phrase in a tight
situation. ‘Gorbachev is clearly an
historic figure,‘ he admitted. Did this
mean he was a great man or simply ‘Gorby‘s history"? After informing us that he wouldn‘t recognise the new regime (was this a political statement, or simply a confession that all those danged Russkies
looked the same?). we were cheered up by the reminder that ‘crews don‘t
always work out.‘ Baffled expressions eased when we realised
that he‘d inserted an extra ‘r‘ in there
somewhere.
But what of the boys in the frontline. the Moscow correspondents? The BBC man Joh Simpson had last been seen in Baghdad, desperately trying to emulate CNN. As a reward he‘d been sent off to Moscow to do nice
it
human interest stories on the queues
at Pizzaland. and the glorious coming ofcapitalism. Things hadn’t quite worked out. and you had to feel sorry for the guy. He wore a distinctly injured look talking to camera with the subliminal subtext
clearly. ‘l‘m in the middle of another
bloody civil war here. you bastards. Why don‘t you send out Polly Toynbee and let her duck the bullets?‘ He‘d sensibly limited his activities to having a long-distance and rather inconclusive chat with some tank drivers.
He wore a distinctly injured
look talking to camera with the subliminal subtext clearly, ‘i’m in the middle of another bloody
civil war here, you bastards.
Why don’t you send out Polly
Toynbee and let her duck the bullets?’
ITN‘S Robert Moore was far more
opinionated. He informed us that w
6
were witnessing a ‘right-wing coup’, which certainly threw a spanner into
the ideological works, as the other channel were insisting it was traditional Communist hardliners who were the baddies. ITN stirred the debate with a few choice
comments from a professor at Essex
University who rather relished
pointing out that, for Boris (or Baris
as the trendy new pronunciation has it) Yeltsin, ‘the future looks tacky in the short term.‘
Despite Yanayev‘s deeply-felt
comments. the BBC seemed to have
decided that we‘d seen the last of Gorbachev. Brian Hanrahan presented The Gorby Years, a hastily-compiled collection of archive clippings that proved conclusively that Mikhail had
everything it takes to be a member of
the Royal family. It was all walkabouts, sound-bite quotes and affectionate greetings with
world-leaders. The Kremlin will miss
him, but not halfas much as the newsrooms, where there will be a three-minute slot that is forever Gorby. If he ever gets out of there alive (and let‘s pray he shall), there‘s a chat-show guest slot awaiting him for life. (Tom Lappin)
88 The List 23 — 29 August 1991