Square Eyes

Television Reviews

Movie of the week, 2001 - A space odyssey, SBS, Weds, 10pm:

Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece still resonates three decades later - and Arthur C Clarke's short story still seems ahead of its time. It's a prescient mediation on the relationship between man and machine, in a poetic blend of unforgettable images and wondrous music, told like a symphony in four parts, with minimal dialogue. HAL offers an unsettling insight into how computers would take control of our lives. The ultimate irony is that we're still tribal apes fiddling excitedly with every new gizmo. Is the moon monolith really just an iPod prototype?

Wire in the Blood, ABC, Fri, 8.30pm:

A child is found dead from an OD in a deserted warehouse, then another and another. Dr Hill's (Robson Green) just the police profiler to solve the mystery in the third series of this excellent police drama.

Tom Brown's Schooldays, ABC, Sun, 8.30pm:

Thomas Hughes' classic novel about a boy's life at a 19th century rugby school is a rollicking tale, although this truncated version takes some liberties. Stephen Fry is great as the headmaster and there's enough good-natured ribbing of English school life to make it amusing as well as moving.

Dirty Deeds, NBN, Sun, 9.30pm:

Writer/director David Caesar offers a quirky, comic antipodean version of a Tarantino/Guy Ritchie gangster romp. Barry (Bryan Brown) is a laconic underworld boss in 60s Sydney, when the American mafia send out some enforcers (led by John Goodman) for a slice of the action. Baz takes them off for some outback adventures, while also juggling his rabid wife (Toni Collette) and mistress (Kestie Morassi), and a crooked cop (Sam Neill). It's fast and furious, blackly comic and distinctly Aussie.

Jimmy's Kitchen, ABC, Tues, 8pm:

If you're looking for Jamie Oliver's inspiration for his kids-off-the-streets noshery, consider Jimmy Pham, a Vietnamese-Australian, who's changed the lives of street kids in Hanoi thanks to KOTO, a restaurant and training school for children aged 16 to 22. It's an amazing and uplifting story about a humble man doing extraordinary things.

Big Storm - the Lynndie England story, SBS, Tues, 8.30pm:

This hapless small town army reservist signed on at age 17 and became globally infamous for appearing thumbs up before the camera over naked prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Conveniently for the US administration, the focus for all that's rotten in Iraq has fallen on her head as the Army bungles along unable to even determine what to charge her with. This doco details the whole sorry circumstances with key players, including journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the scandal.