Tom's TV picks, week beginning 11 December 2011

Two absolute must-sees in a double-header on Thursday night:

At 10pm, SBS1 is screening Dirty Pretty Things (2002), a film which lifts the lid on the precarious existence of the hundreds of thousands of "illegal immigrants" who keep British industry, in this case hospitality, ticking over. Despite their contribution, they are harassed at every turn by heartless immigration officials, which helps of course to keep wages low and the workers scared. But in this case the workers begin to overcome their fear and take a stand. Great acting by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Okonedo (who turned up recently in The Slap) and even Audrey Tatou who shows in this that she can do more than light and frothy. Sergi Lopez adds to his list of menacing roles as the evil hotel manager who is involved in a very dark scheme to exploit the hapless migrant workers.

Followed immediately afterwards by:

The Colonel (2006) (11.45pm, SBS1) in which a senior French military officer's brutal deeds in Algeria during its war of independence are exposed many years later. Blurb says: "A "Reformed Colonel" is found dead in Paris, a couple of decades after Algeria's struggle for independence was won from France. Lieutenant Galois is assigned the investigation of this murder. She receives the diary of Lieutenent Guy Rossi who served under The Colonel in Algeria in 1956, and has been reported as missing in action since 1957. The revelations found in Rossi's diary go far beyond The Colonel's actions in Algeria, and give an insight on how dirty Algeria's War for Independence really was." Directed by Costa Gavras, which is always an indicator of quality.

And, for something completely different on Friday night, the rarely-screened (and only recently rediscovered after having disappeared for decades) Wake in Fright (renamed "Outback" in international release) (1971) on ABC2 on Friday at 9.30pm. A teacher wanders into an Outback Australian town intending just to stay the night. Instead, he is quickly drawn into the town's life centred on drinking to excess, brawls and 'roo hunting. Dark black drama. An excellent antidote to the romanticisation of the Australian bush which has been a central theme of Australian nationalism since the days of Henry Lawson and The Bulletin and which continues to this day with rubbish like Baz Luhrman's Australia or pretty much any tourism promo you care to mention.

Tom's TV picks, week beginning 4 December 2011

Tuesday at 8.30pm: Go Back to Where You Came From, on SBS1. If you missed this first time around, make sure you catch it on repeat. It's reviewed here:
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=6955:go-back-to-where-you-came-from&Itemid=453

Tuesday at 10.05pm: My Perestroika on SBS1. Documentary depicts the devastating consequences of the USSR's very own "structural adjustment programme" in the 1980s which Gorbachev started in an attempt to deal with the long-standing crisis of Soviet state capitalism and which was continued at a more rapid rate under the tender watchful eyes of right wing US-trained economists after the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s. There were those on the left who supported perestroika on the grounds of making Russian "socialism" "more efficient". Others attacked it because it further undermined the Stalinist "planned economy" inherited from Brezhnev. Revolutionary socialists saw it as an attempt by the Russian ruling class to save their system at the expense of workers. This documentary shows what 25 years of capitalist restructuring has meant for the working class of the USSR. Does much to explain the collapse of support for Putin evident at this weekend's elections.

Wednesday at 9pm: Another one hour special for The Thick of It on ABC1.

Thursday at 8.30pm: Here I Am (2010) on ABC1. There's been a slew of films in recent years which present a picture of Indigenous people in which the coercive and genocidal policies of courts, police, mining companies, pastoralists and governments are more or less absent from the script. See, for example, "Samson and Delilah". The reference points are almost entirely internal to the community involved. The problem with this "interior" approach to film making about Indigenous life is that the attempt to escape simply seeing Indigenous people as "passive victims" of overwhelming forces can all too easily swing in the other direction, placing individual choice at the centre. It's as if Indigenous people's "lifestyle choices" can be understood in the same way as, for example, the wretched characters in "The Slap". This approach very easily slides into victim blaming. "Here I Am" has its heart in the right place, in its tender portrayal of a young woman's attempt to get her life straight after two years in jail on a drugs offence, but by abstracting from the monumental insititutional structures of oppression faced by young Indigenous women, the director, Bec Cole, too easily leaves the door open for the idea that Aborigines should just try to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". Get clean, meet a nice guy, get a job, reconcile with your mum and you've got a bright new future. A cruel delusion maybe shared by middle class film-makers but which bears no resemblance to reality.

Saturday at 10.40pm: The Front Page (1974) on ABC2. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, on their tenth movie pairing, team up with a young Susan Sarandon. Blurb says: "Hildy Johnson is the top reporter on a Chicago newspaper during the 1920s. Tired of the whole game he's determined to quit his job to get married. His scheming editor, Walter Burns, has other plans though. It's the day before guilty (but insane) murderer, Earl Williams, is due to go to the gallows and Burns tempts Johnson to stay and write the story." Movie depicts mainstream journalism as a despicable trade in which ethics are completely dispatched for the sake of a "good story", real or fabricated.

And don't forget part 3 of The Promise on Sunday night at 8.30pm on SBS1.