Tom's TV picks, week beginning 27 November

by Tom Bramble on Saturday, 26 November 2011 at 19:39

 

Two things worth watching on Sunday night.

8.30pm on SBS1: The Promise: part 1 of a new series. Here's the blurb that outlines the basic story: "Just as 18-year-old Londoner Erin sets off to spend summer in Israel with her best friend, Eliza, she unearths an old diary belonging to her sick grandfather, Len. Intrigued by the life of this old man she barely knows, she takes the diary with her and is stunned to learn of his part in the post-WWII British peacekeeping force in what was then Palestine. Left to her own devices when Eliza begins national service in the Israeli army, Erin witnesses the complexities of life, for both Jews and Arabs, in this troubled land."

So, shades of Ken Loach's "Land and Freedom" in the basic plot device. The plus points: the series shows how Israel was born in violence and how that violence is maintained today. For those who don't know much about the Israeli colonial project it will be quite an eye-opener. And the Zionists hate it, which is always a good recommendation. Wikipedia records that: "A press attaché at the Israeli embassy in London condemned the drama to The Jewish Chronicle as the worst example of anti-Israel propaganda he had ever seen on television, saying it "created a new category of hostility towards Israel"".

The downside: it's a British production and seriously underplays the role of the British in facilitating the Zionist project in the 1930s and 1940s - quite an historical distortion in that respect. And, as the blurb suggests, despite the ranting of the Zionists, it does at times tie itself in knots trying to present a "balanced" view. But it gets better as the series progresses, the compulsory romantic interlude notwithstanding.

12.10am on SBS1: Ae Fond Kiss: speaking of Ken Loach, any Loach film, even a bad one, is better than most. And this is by no means bad. Indeed, it's rather good: "Sparks fly in Glasgow's south side when Casim, a young Muslim, falls in love with Roisin, an Irish Catholic. Casim's parents try their hardest to make him marry the girl they have chosen for him back in Pakistan, but Casim and Roisin are devoted to each other and determined to stay together." A small-scale, intimate film that shows decent people trying to overcome family prejudices that in turn are born out of the wider crucible of colonialism and racism. Even though one barracks for the couple, you are also invited to understand why it is that the Pakistani family are so set against their son marrying "out" of the community. 

Wednesday 9pm on ABC1: The Thick of It: The best political satire on TV in an extended one-hour special. Pitch black comedy.

On Friday night there are two programmes both worth watching and both at 9.30pm:

ABC2 is screening Fear of a Brown Planet: 75 minutes of incisive comedy which skewers racism in Australia, while SBS2 is showing The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey a film featuring the hero of the Indian revolt of 1857 who leads his men in a courageous fight against the corrupt and exploitative East India Company. This is British colonialism as it really was: "dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt", as Karl Marx described the rise of capitalism.