The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 68

TUESDAY august 17 PREVIEW GUIDE uuin filhi lira ROBIN OLIVER Nine, 8pm DAWSON'S CREEK A 10 Perfect Wedding: Ten, jj 8.30pm. Dawson (James -J Van Der Beek) and friends agree to help Joey's father with the catering at a local wedding. One disaster after another but that's not all. ABC, 8.30pm mmm f. i J.EN Weary Dunlop returned to Hellfire Pass and the Burma- Thailand railway, as he did sev Vsy- i I ht Ir CHARMED Wedding from I Hell: Ten, 9.30pm.

Aaron V-jf" Spelling needs a new magic wand. This series about three sisterly witches (Shannen Doherty, 90270; Holly Marie Combs, Picket Fences; Alyssa Milano, Who 's the Boss?) seems designed to rival Buffy and somehow did so in the US ratings. Not for long. Pathetic. TROTSKY'S ASSASSIN: SBS, midnight.

The ice-pick used I ifSp to assassinate Stalin's great liJS enemy, Leon Trotsky, is notorious but what of Ramon Mercader, the man who struck the blow? Mercader was recruited by the KGB and this documentary explores the first bungled attempt by armed drunks at Trotsky's Mexican compound, then Mercader's sinister friendship with the man he would kill. CONFIDENCE just rolls off Drew Carey, who is preparing his Drew Carey Show team for a live, partly unscripted telecast later in the year (he has another show, Whose Line is it which is totally improvised)! The gimmick requires three performances, in rapid sequence for each US time zone, although, as ER before it, the novelty of going live will be lost by the time the program is seen here. The laid-back approach can be the show's undoing. A couple of weeks ago, Carey served a complete dud, set in a bowling alley where he and the outrageous Mimi (Kathy Kinney) teamed as a couple of hustlers. This time, for the 100th program and the season-closer, there are some amusing capers when the Dutch owner of the Cleveland department store (Hal Linden) arrives in town with secret plans to sack the staff, implode the building and replace it with a more profitable multi-level car park.

Drew overhears this plan being discussed during a rare excursion into the store and sets out to save everybody's job. This provides the cue for one of those elaborate song and dance acts with Linden joining in a routine from How 'o Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and a happy ending to see this hit show head for its annual break. The pay-phone sequence misfires. Robin Oliver eral times until his death, he felt the recurring pain of the bugler playing Tle Last Post. This documentary explains why.

Of the 61,000 prisoners of war who worked on the railway, 2,815 Australians, 6,281 Britons, 2,490 Dutch and 589 others died. Up to 92,000 Asian labourers also died. Life and death on the railway proved a defining event for Australians at war and they were subjected to atrocities rivalled in their horror only by the Sandakan death marches. Hugh Clarke, an Australian whose body and spirit survived but whose mind was forever tormented, once said that Hellfire Pass was like a scene from Dante's Inferno. There was a difference, however.

The inscription at the entrance to Dante's hell said: "Abandon all hope, you who enter." Dunlop, Clarke and most of the other prisoners walked through hell but clung to hope. Eric "Bluey" Evans determined after bashings by Japanese and Korean guards: "I thought, my wife, I'm going home to her and no-one is going to stop me." Hell on earth thousands of prisoners of war died working on the Burma-Thailand railway. Those who survived are forever tormented. ROUGH SHED: ABC, wg0 1.50am. Outback life won- 00 A 11..

A 1, Mary Mac joins her son, who went to Asia from Queensland as an engineer, now tends the war graves, inspired by the men lying there, and spends his spare time exploring the evil railway line. Beattie believes the men's spirits still walk the line and that their story is a triumph of the human spirit in the face of terrible adversity. Tony Stephens Producer-director Robin Newell has used captured Japanese footage and images from American, English, Dutch and Australian archives. Newell 's crew also took advantage of a return visit to the railway by surviving diggers for the opening of the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum. Newell uses Rod Beattie as a link between past and present.

Beattie, Young Errol, and his daughter, Kayla, at the start of shearing at Budgerygar Station. Meet Dogga Dare, Mad Max, Broky, Tubby, Duck Maggot and Pud. "The shearers work hardest, the rouse-abouts work hard, but the cook works the longest hours," Mary Mac says. DOUG ANDERSON iMif fin? DMto Language Lovers say it French Vietnamese Italian Arabic German Modern Greek Turkish Spanish Latin Mandarin Chinese Russian Japanese THE STORY OF XiNGHUA (1994) On SBS at 1.40am (Wednesday) FREE enterprise and a more open market economy are supposedly transforming China within the rigid bounds of communism. But in the rural heartland, where reforms are slower to take effect, the people aren't exactly sluggish when it comes to hopping in for their chop.

Wanglai is a grocer who operates a nice little earner flogging souvenir stones, stolen from the Great Wall of China. And while the stones turn a handy profit, he is more interested in a cache of gold reputed to be buried beneath a once-strategic tower in the rampart. Not a devastatingly subtle allegory, but there you are. His neighbour, Fulin, is a thoughtful and sensitive scholar, who derives spiritual reward from a grove of saplings he has planted and is nurturing towards harvest. Matters of fecundity and instant gratification enter the equation as Fulin and Wanglai's wife, Xinghua, see eye to eye and get hip to hip under crossed pitchforks.

In seconds she's pregnant. But Fulin's scruples aren't as pure as the driven apricot blossoms and Xinghua's plans for a quickie divorce and delirious happy-ever-aftering disintegrate. Chen Kaige's star, Jiang Wenli, is attractive as ever in the title role and while the film doesn't exactly resonate with feminist vigour, it has the flavour. THE STOLEN CHILDREN (1992) On SBS at 10pm THE cops arrive at a sleazy apartment building in Milan to have a chat with a woman who has been prostituting her ll-year-old daughter. Someone, tired of her loathsome neglect and wanton destruction of the youngster, has dobbed her in.

The police are suitably disgusted and arrest the rotten slag. It becomes clear that the person who informed on her is her own nine-year-old son, Rosettas brother, Luciano. The authorities decide that the youngsters should be dispatched to an orphanage in Bologna and assign two young cops to the job of getting them there. One of the carib-inieri finds a way out of the assignment, leaving his kind and decent colleague, Antonio, to manage on his own. He soon discovers just how badly the children have been treated.

Rosetta is wounded to the core of her being and Luciano-suffers severe asthma. When they arrive in Bologna, the institution refuses to take the children so Antonio determines to stay with them and care for them until something can be done. Thus begins a journey of hope and friendship emerging from the most appalling abuse of a decent individual trying to hold back the weight of a callous world that has collapsed into indifference. Their journey across the country from Milan to Bologna, to Rome and into Calabria and Sicily, reveals the deep and festering wounds behind the gloss of a country which manages to live stylishly while being technically, politically and morally bankrupt. In a week brimming with mediocrity and films that spit on the intellect of the beholder, this stands out as one with something to say.

A film which will surely linger in your memory. MURDER ON THE RIO GRANDE (1993) On Seven at noon DO YOU imagine, in the wildest realms of possibility, that sultry Victoria Principal could possibly come off second best when she falls prey to a sadistic killer and his two psychopathic accomplices? Dear me! What a prospect! They've even made her a single mother to heighten the sense of vulnerability. Without wishing to dismiss her undoubted grit frivolously, I venture to suggest that a resolute woman such as Principal has seen Deliverance several times. She will know precisely what to do when the feral bodgies shoot her boyfriend and guide dead during a Whitewater -rafting expedition and set themselves to interfere with her liberties. She will escape and they will pursue, slavering demoniacally.

Is she fit enough? Can the hunter be outwitted by the game? Courses at the University of Sydney, week nights and Saturdays, 6 to 10 week courses for beginners and higher levels, plus over 1 50 courses on everything from Marking the millennia to Developing a career plan to Cec7 B. DeMille Spring Program starts 30 August For days, times, prices and immediate enrolment Q) 9351 2907 Fax: 9351 5022 email: infocce.usyd.edu.au Website: http: www.usyd.edu.aucce SMH The Guide, August 16-22, 1999.