TELEVISION
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday March 8, 2011
WONDERS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM8.30pm, SBS OneFew things dull our sense of wonderment more than television. Yet television provides us with a fantastic array of illustrated ideas and a means to inquire into the miracles of existence. Members of our species couldn't wait for its invention to begin their constant contemplation of the heavens and to speculate on the challenging questions of existence. Little by little, knowledge of the planets in our solar system and the complexities of the endless cosmos has accumulated, and the wildest guesses are matched only by wonders of breathtaking simplicity and complexity. "We are all made of star stuff," Carl Sagan used to say in his (still relevant) series Cosmos. Thirty years after that program went to air, a cool young astrophysicist, Professor Brian Cox, trundles down to Tunisia to begin an expedition that eventually takes viewers to the rings of Saturn. In an age where cynicism and a "been-there-done-that" attitude dilutes our ability to marvel at things, this is a journey of discovery infused with endearing optimism. To ponder how a mass of interstellar dust and gas could accumulate, metamorphose, develop an atmosphere and give rise to a multitude of species (including subsets like Donald Trump or Sarah Palin) is to revel in fractal conceptualities and paradox. The only problem with Cox's expedition is that it clashes with the first episode of a five-part doco series on ABC1, How the Earth Made Us, scheduled to screen at the same time. It speculates on the shaping of human civilisation by the planet's natural forces.HOT DOCS10.05pm, SBS OnePray the Devil back to Hell is an unusual documentary about events in Liberia in 2003. As you doubtless recall, the country was engaged in a ruinous civil war between warlords and the regime of the corrupt president, Charles Taylor - a Libyan-backed former guerilla who ruled the country dictatorially from 1997 to 2003. As rebels closed in on the capital, Monrovia, and peace talks teetered on the brink of collapse, the country's women - Christian and Muslim - united to form a thin white line between the opposing forces. The whiteness of the line came from the T-shirts they wore, garments which they threatened to remove publicly when peace talks in Ghana stalled. Taylor was duly ousted and peace ensued under a caretaker government headed by the captivatingly named Moses Blah. In 2006 Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became head of state and Taylor was extradited from Nigeria to face charges of war crimes. As we are seeing in other parts of the continent, women's voices and "people power" are reaching critical mass as crooked and depraved dictators are overthrown by people in T-shirts of various hues. The threat of nudity is a potent political weapon and should be encouraged at every opportunity.RADIOBACKGROUND NOISEmidnight, 2MBS-FMA profile in raw noise and the manipulated, world-within-world rhythms of the British drummer and composer Basil Kirchin, aka "the father of ambient music". You've probably heard some of his scores without being aware of his name but there's no excuses after this interlude featuring soundtracks from unmade films and made ones, such as the Mondo-ish 1960s depravity doco Primitive London. Eno, Nurse With Wound and Broadcast all took inspiration from this iconic figure now, sadly, quiet. At 1am, the curator, a sinister cowled figure with sealed ears and blanks where his eyes should be, swings open the doors of The Dust Museum for a cacophony of '70s prog-experimental-avant rock courtesy of Slapp Happy, Henry Cow and the Art Bears.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
