Tom's TV picks w/b 7 August

So DEADWOOD is heading towards its finale, the penultimate episode this MONDAY on ABC2 at 9.30pm. It says something about the quality of this series that, although many of its leading characters are so unpleasant, parasitical or otherwise highly objectionable, it is so damned involving and such unmissable TV. The town of Deadwood is divided between the "Good" Guys (very broadly defined!), ranging from the saintly (e.g. Doc Cochran and Trixie) to the scoundrels (e.g. Swearengen), and the Complete Bastards (e.g. Hearst, Woolcott and Tolliver). But none of them is perfect (well, perhaps with the exception of the Doc) and all of them are such well-drawn characters and so well acted that you follow them all with interest. One of my favourite characters is the utterly loathsome E.B. Farnum, the hotel-keeper, a reptilian figure, a toady to the rich and powerful, a tyrant to the weak - a creation worse in these regards even than Mr Collins, Jane Austen's vile country parson in Pride and Prejudice - another of my "so awful he's a pleasure to watch" crew. And Al Swearengen - an all-time great creation of TV played so well by Ian McShane. Hardly plausible that a brothel owner would speak like a character out of Shakespeare but what force he gives to his words!

Deadwood is not just an enjoyable tale of rivalry on the Western frontier but also a metaphor for the rise of monopoly capitalism. Deadwood in its buccaneering heyday of independent prospectors and brothel owners illustrates the notion that "anyone" can make it rich on the frontier. There's no bank, no laws, no government, so the small bourgeois in the town (Tolliver and Swearengen) get to make the rules. But threats keep emanating from the east in the form of Government (Yankton and Montana) and Big Capital (Hearst). Big Capital brooks no obstacle and is willing to use Pinkertons and other strongarm methods to get its way. So Hearst murders union organisers and squeezes out rival business operators in order to sew up the whole town - you can see from the outset that Alma Garrett's friendly neighbourhood bank is either going to have to get big or go under. The Sioux and other Native Americans are also virtually wiped out. The independent prospectors are bought out or forced off and replaced by wage labour under the command of Big Capital. Eventually, the takeover is complete and Big Capital (in the form of Hearst) moves on to conquer new territories on its way westwards towards the Pacific Ocean and the subjugation of the American continent.

Well, that turned out to be a bit of an essay, so less detail on what follows...

MONDAY night (SBS2 at 10.30pm) also features THE COLOUR OF PARADISE (1999), a beautiful and touching film about a blind young Iranian boy, Mohammed, who returns home from his school in Tehran to his village for a three month summer break to the joy of his grandmother and sisters but the chagrin of his dad who regards him as an embarassment and a potential obstacle to his pending marriage. Dad, Hashem, tries to palm him off to the village carpenter for an apprenticeship. But all Mohammed wants is the love of his father. Great camerawork, impressive acting and heart-rending material.

Another great movie on WEDNESDAY night (SBS1 at 10.05pm) - THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006) which tells the story of an East German intelligence (Stasi) operative who is sent to spy on a "dissident" playwright and who, through his growing disgust with his assignment, gradually "turns" on his masters. This film just gives some small inkling of the degree to which the East German government penetrated the lives of almost everyone and therefore some idea why the East Germans were so keen to throw off "socialism" (really state capitalism) in 1989.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against apartheid Israel is getting more and more coverage in the media as right wing pundits and politicians - from Andrew Bolt to Kevin Rudd - work themselves up into a lather throwing around accusations of anti-semitism. It was not so different in the early days of the campaign to isolate apartheid South Africa. Nowadays even the most right wing politicians say how much they admire Nelson Mandela. Forty years ago figures such as John Howard were arguing that sanctions against South Africa were a communist plot to bring the country under Soviet control. HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT JOHANNESBURG? (THURSDAY, 1.30PM, SBS1) tells the story of the sporting boycott of South Africa from its earliest days and the shit that *they* had to put up with at that time.

Finally, a double bill on ABC2 on SATURDAY night. Both directed by Stanley Kramer, both featuring Sidney Poitier and both confronting the issue of racism in the United States. THE DEFIANT ONES (1958) at 8.30pm and GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER? (1967) at 10.05pm. Although the latter is by far the better known, the former, about two prisoners, one black (Poitier), one white (Tony Curtis), on the run from jail, is better in my opinion. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is just a bit too stage-y and just too white-bread - the characters are all squeaky clean, the Poitier character most of all. And while Poitier, who plays an upper middle class, Yale-qualified doctor, and his white girlfriend only have to win over her ever-so-liberal middle class parents in the latter film, in The Defiant Ones, the Poitier character is forced to challenge a tough-nut hardcore racist jailbird who in the end makes far more of a sacrifice for the black man than simply giving his daughter's hand in marriage.