& RADID
LISTINGS
A selection oi television highlights, listed by day, in chronological order. Television listings compiled by Eddie Gibb.
FRIDAY 19
I Moonwalker (BBC 1) 7—8.30pm. Screening of Michael Jackson‘s FX-heavy feature. presumably timed to cash in on interest surrounding Jacko‘s improbable marriage to Lisa-Marie Presley. Basically a series of pop videos run together with an even more improbable storyline.
I What the Magazines Say (BBC2) 7—7.30pm. Suzanne Moore. The Guardian’s wonderfully waspish columnist. casts a sceptical eye over this week’s batch of mags.
I Tights, Camera, Action! (Channel 4) 8-8.30pm. Channel 4's populist dance programme continues with pieces by Japanese director and choreographer Saburo Teshigawara and The Cholmondleys‘ Lea Anderson. who also presents the programme.
I Passengers (Channel 4) 11.05pm—12.05am. Snappy videocam magazine programme which avoids the banality of much youth programming scheduled at this time on a Friday night.
SATURDAY 20
I Ways oi Seeing (BBC2) 2—2.30pm. The last in the repeated series by seminal art critic John Berger. first shown over twenty years ago. In today‘s programme. Berger tackles the links between oil painting and advertising.
I The People’s Parliament (Channel 4) 7—8pm. Speaker Lesley Riddoch calls order for another session of the debating chamber which represents ordinary people.
I Death on the Rock (BBC2) 7.15—8.05pm. The Troubles season continues with a screening of the controversial documentary about the shooting of three lRA members in Gibraltar. The Government tried to ban the 1988 Thames Television documentary but it was shown in its original form. The incident went straight to the heart of allegations that the Government was operating a ‘shoot-to-kill‘ policy in Northern lreland. Ten days after the documentary was screened the Government imposed reporting restrictions on paramilitaries. forcing programme makers to dub many interviews.
I Peter Grimes (BBC2) 8.05—10.30pm. Another in the BBC's ‘specially for television‘ season of operas. Peter Grimes is the Benjamin Britten opera based on the story of a misfit fisherman whose apprentice is lost at sea in suspicious circumstances. It is the first production of the opera by the English National Opera for over 30 years.
I Punchline (Scottish) 9.40—1 1.55pm. Sally Field. Tom Hanks and John Goodman in a comedy about stand-up comedy. Hanks and Field are the aspiring comics. Goodman the old pro.
I olne lieaven (Channel 4) 9.55—10.20pm. Frank Skinner plays himself. more or less. while Paula Wilcox
and John Forgeham are his seedy parean .
who make Harry Enfield‘s Slobs look sophisticated.
SUNDAY 21
I The Score (BBC2) 7.20—8pm. The classical music magazine looks at the importance of music in Sarajevo and whether modern science can help replicate the sound of the Stradivarius violin on modern instruments. It also profiles Carl Stalling. the original Loony Toons man. and Scott Bradley who wrote the Tom and Jerrv music.
I Coast oi Dreams (Channel 4) 8—9pm. Reshowing of this entertaining programme about Brit couples who head for the Eldorado-like world of the Costa del Sol. Typical amongst them are Mike and Betti Thompson. formerly of Southend and now the proud owners of the Bees Knees pub in Benalmadena. where they serve up roast beef. Yorkshire pud and all the trimmings. There’ll always be an England.
I Tales oi Para llandy(BBC1) 8.15—9.15pm. Another gentle tale of West Highland folk aboard the Vital Spark with Gregor Fisher and Rikki Fulton. In tonight‘s episode Para Handy resolves to sort out the local drunk who is terrorising a Wee Free community.
I lied Fox (Scottish) 9—10.55pm. Repeat showing of the star-studded thn'ller about industrial espionage and international terrorism. with John Hurt. Brian Cox and Jane Birkin.
I The Cowboys (Channel 4) 9—1 1.25pm. John Wayne is a Montana rancher taking 1200 steers on a 400-mile cattle drive in this classic western.
I Written in Blood (BBC2) 9.30—10.20pm. More from the Troubles season. ‘25 Bloody Years’. This film by Peter Taylor sees the long-serving Northern Ireland reporter re-interviewing some of the Republicans and Loyalists he first spoke to over twenty years ago. Taylor also assesses the chances of the Downing Street Declaration bringing lasting peace.
I Everyman (BBCl) 10.40—11.20pm. Brook Advisory Centres revolutionised family planning when they were first set up 30 years ago to offer contraceptive advice to unmarried mothers. ‘The Ostn'ch Position' looks at the Brook's history through the eyes of eight clients whose stories are put in the context of the music. advertisements and newspaper headlines of the day. Lady Helen Brook looks back of 30 years of Brook Centres and the distances attitudes to pre-man'tal sex have travelled in that time.
I Don’t look own (Scottish)
1 1.10pm-12.10am. Festival special from the Acropolis tent on Calton Hill with music. comedy and performance. An appearance from Jim Rose‘s Circus Sideshow looks like a good bet — watch out for the Armenian Rubber Man.
I Children oi Woodstock (Scottish) 12.10—l.15am. The 25th anniversary of the legendary hippy festival looks at the survivors. including one man who never left the site.
MONDAY 22
I The Vision Thing (Channel 4) 8—8.30pm. Sheena McDonald talks to world music aficionado. photographer and sometime Talking Heads singer David Byme about the power of music to inspire. heal and oppress.
I Travels With My Camera (Channel 4) 9—10pm. Ukranian journalist Vitali Vitaliev, who defected from the then Soviet Union five years ago. returns to his homeland to find freedom has brought the country to crisis — inflation. unemployment and poverty are all rife. This series of personal documentaries has successfully managed to tackle the Big Picture by looking through the eyes of individuals.
I Allen liation (Scottish) 9—l 1.20pm. Surprisingly good sci-fi film with liverish- looking but benign aliens trying to integrate in a prejudiced human society. with James Caan and Terence Stamp.
I Edinburgh lllghts (BBC2) 11.15—11.55pm. More from the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe presented by Emma Freud. Tonight's show includes German- bom singer Ute Lemper whose recordings of Kurt Weill songs made her internationally famous.
TUESDAY 23
I Out (Channel 4) 9—lOpm. The accessible and consistently entertaining gay magazine programme tonight looks at the effect of Czechoslovakia's ‘velvet revolution’ on its queer citizens. plus an ‘outing’ to Blackpool.
I The People’s Dictator (BBC2) 9.30—10.20pm. A profile of China's supreme leader Deng Xiaoping shown to coincide with his 90th birthday. Julian
O' Halloran. who witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre. asks whether Xiaoping should be remembered as the man who fed 1.2 billion Chinese or an oppressor of human rights.
I Dennis Potter in Edinburgh (Channel 4) 10—1 1. 10pm. Last year's McTaggart Lecture. the centrepiece of the Edinburgh Television Festival. was delivered by Dennis Potter, who railed against all- powerful media empires such as Rupert Murdoch's. The recording of the lecture is introduced by Melvyn Bragg. who memorably interviewed Potter shortly before his death earlier this year.
I Festival Cinema (Scottish) ll.40pm-12.25am. Allan Campbell reports from the Edinburgh Film Festival. including an interview with Ken Loach about his latest film lxzdybird. Ladybird.
WEDNESDAY 24
I Short Stories (Channel 4) 8.30—9pm. This series of ‘regional‘ films from around the UK heads to the West Country for ‘When You Ran Me Down' which records the meeting between a sixteen- year-old joyrider and the man he hit in a stolen car.
I The Human Animal (BBCl) 9.30—10.20pm. Desmond Morris rehearses his familiar ‘naked ape' themes over entertaining footage of the way humans behave the world over.
I IYPD Blue (Channel 4) 10-1 1pm. More from the best television precinct on the block; Kelly is forced to arrest a close friend.
I Devil’s Advocate (Channel 4)
11—1 1.45pm. Darcus Howe argues with Mark Tully. veteran lndia correSpondent. who recently resigned from the BBC in protest against its ‘Birtist’ tendencies.
I Edinburgh lights (BBC2) 11.15—11.55pm. More news and features from the Edinburgh Festivals.
THURSDAY 25
I The Business (Channel 4) 7.30—8pm. Zoe Wanamaker narrates a film about the ice cream business from the ultra- premium Haagen Dazs end of the market to the vegetable oil-based froth sold by many ice cream vans.
I DED (Channel 4) 8.30—9pm. Bruce Silcock is the ‘Maggot Mogul‘ - a man who plans to build a fortune not on the maggots he breeds at his Essex bait farm. but their by-products. He discovered that rag-meat. the leftovers of a maggot feeding-frenzy. made a handy organic fertiliser and now plans to step up production. much to his neighbours' dismay.
I The Young Lions (Channel 4) 9pm—12.05am. The Marlon Brando season continues with this 1958 film from lrwin Shaw’s novel about an idealistic German soldier whose illusions of the glorious Fuhrer are shattered during the Second World War. Also stoning Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin.
I French and Saunders (BBC 1) 9.30—10pm. Rauns of the successful last series. including Jennifer Saunders donning the singlet to become Sigoumey Weaver.
The List 19—25 August 1994 as