tv previews
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday February 22, 2010
Gavin and StaceyABC2, 9.30pmThis warm British comedy received a chilly reception during its first Australian airing on Channel Seven, shoved on late and unloved on a Saturday night without much support. Essex-boy Gavin (Mathew Horne) finally meets his long-distance, work-telephone sweetheart, Wales-based Stacey (Joanna Page), when each brings their overweight best friend for company on a blind double-date to London. So begins their jolly journey into romance, casual shagging and each other's kooky families. Here's hoping it gets a better reception on the ABC as there is a lot to like here.Grand Designs Revisited: BirminghamABC1 6.05pmKevin McCloud checks in on a housing co-operative of 13 first-time builders who learnt a variety of skills and then spent 20 hours a week each for two years building their own and each other's houses. It's a bloody hard grind as their 20 hours is in addition to their jobs, study and families. Morale changes from week to week, almost as much as the hairdos of Angela - the housing head - who cajoles, pokes and guides her charges with great affection but a steely resolve to see them under their home-made rooftops on time and on budget. Their sense of achievement is delightful.The Neanderthal CodeABC1, 8.30pmNo, not the latest blockbuster by Dan Brown but a smart, high-quality documentary about what happened to Europe's original inhabitants before homo sapiens strolled in from Africa about 40,000 years ago. The thesis of this intelligent two-parter is essentially that the Neanderthals were so much like us that they could be classed as part of the wide variety of peoples among us today and that they weren't annihilated but assimilated. It's likely we co-existed, exchanged our genes along with our beads, made love not war and co-opted and decorated their caves as we spread west.The Neanderthals' bad press is corrected (they weren't ape-like, their brains were bigger than ours, they weren't cannibals) and their image is further rehabilitated through a fascinating demonstration by a French butcher of how well one of their stone tools skins and dismembers. The hunt is now on to find if Neanderthal DNA exists in us.Whatever Happened to Brenda Hean?ABC1, 9.25pmYou may know about the flooding of Tasmania's Lake Pedder for hydroelectricity in the 1970s but you may not know of the strange disappearance of one of Australia's first environmentalists, Brenda Hean. Seated in the back of an old Tiger Moth, she set out with her pilot for Canberra to sky-write her message above the heads of federal politicians but the plane never made it and was never found.This understated but still slightly sensationalist documentary is an intriguing story compellingly told as it weaves back-story footage of twin-set-and-pearls Hean and her friends taking on the political establishment with current-day interviews that feature many of the bit players.Was the plane tampered with? Why didn't the police investigate more thoroughly? Did the air search cover the right territory? There's a bit of mischievous myth-making going on here as it leaves many of its questions unanswered but the Little Britain-ish characters are so colourful, the dark-stained history so ugly and the footage so illuminating, why let "faction" get in the way of a good story?
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald