The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 62

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 13 PREVIEW GUIDE IE I WJiffll tort df iaaln? i mm i i WMi I ROBIN OUVER SOUTH PARK DISCOVERED: SBS. Last week. lZe those hot-tub wafflers Matt Stone and Trev Parker spent too long spoofing their role as creators. Now lliis second spin on South Park is stretched thin to make 50 minutes. Fairplay, a Colorado gold-rush town close to Parker's childhood home, quickly twigged it was the prototype South Park.

Vietnam veteran Michael Smith taught Parker metaphysics and is the obvious inspiration for Gerblosky. Bonnie Edmondson, former mayor, recognises herself as Mayor Bonnie. Fairplay's elementary school refuses to co-operate, but others have faces that fit. Amusing match-up clips of the foul-mouthed cartoon characters, returning next week. BUFFY Earshot Seven, 10.35 Dm.

Orieinallv with- f2 drawn because of its prox-EijJI imitv to the Columbine school massacre, this busy episode is a good check-in for those viewers who Buffy Summers does not always slay in the aisles. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) battles with two mouthless demons, but as she does so a globule of liquid falls on her skin. Soon she can read other people's and uses this to advantage to read her teacher's thoughts on Othello. Later she hears somebody planning to massacre all the students the following day. Telepathy leads to convulsions and then it's down to Angel (David Boreanaz), Buffy's 244-year-old vampire squeeze.

Some good jokes. Pass the mulligan stew, will you? ff Jr Sex and the City is fluff, but, once past the jarring opening credits, it's enjoyable fluff. There are some clever lines and it's ditzy feel provides a nice counterpoint to the unusually frank for TV, at least discussions about sex. Filmed as a series of fast-paced vignettes with frequent pieces to camera, it's a bit like Woody Allen meets Melrose Place. Tonight's episode examines that hoary chestnut: singles versus couples.

Miranda, the lawyer, finds her professional stocks soar when the boss thinks she is in a lesbian relationship. His wife had been "looking to add a lesbian couple to our Samantha, the promiscuous executive, looks around a party of couples and points out one married man after another ed him, I've ed him In terms of gender politics it's no great leap forward, its cheerful promiscuity as much about male fantasy as female emancipation. But when you consider that it is written by Darren Star, who cut his teeth on the vacuous Beverly Hills 90210, it could have been worse. Much worse. Greg Hassall of the girls Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) obsesses about sex and relationships.

type du jour, the flamboyantly gay man who peppers every conversation with "don't go there" and seems to like nothing more than to play a girl's best friend. MATT BUCHANAN Ten, 8.30pm PERSONALLY, I'll watch the highlights on the news but there are many about 550 million worldwide who will pore over all three hours of this sequin-soaked, self-congratulatory gabfest of kissy-kissy actors humourlessly thanking everyone and their dog's psychiatrist before bursting into crocodile tears and clutching their Dummy, er, Emmy to their expensive Armani tux or skintight Versace vision. What is it about award ceremonies that so captivates us? Surely it can't be seeing Dennis Franz yet again? Here's a suggestion to help while away the hours: swallow one mouthful of your favourite alcoholic drink every time people 'thank their husbandwife and children. Skull the lot when they thank God. Eat six plain crackers if Franz, Jimmy Smits or Dylan McDermott even so much as leave their seat.

Neck a stubbie of VB and eat a doughnut if you can see Calista Flockhart's ribcage from the back. Break out the champagne and fly that pig around the backyard if the great Judy Davis wins in the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Mini-Series or Movie category. My favourite nominations have to be for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special, in which the 71st Annual Academy Awards and the 1998 Tony Awards are among the frontrunners. Award shows awarding awards to other award shows? Keith Austin III mm Nine, 9.30pm IT SEEMS the hype surrounding Sex and the City may have raised unrealistic expectations most of the complaints received by Nine during last Monday's premiere concerned the lack of nudity. Certainly, compared with the frankness of This Life or the savage satire of The Larry Sanders Show, it's a fairly tame affair.

And those expecting the dark, occasionally bleak humour of the Candace Bushnell book on which it is based will also have been disappointed. It's basically just a bunch of yuppie singles obsessing about sex and relationships much like Seinfeld or Friends, but featuring thirtysomething women and the occasional dirty word thrown in. Carrie Bradshaw, a terminally chirpy columnist (Sarah Jessica Parker), and her anorexic girlfriends sit around in expensive restaurants picking at green salads and making droll observations about modern sexual manners. There are a number of minor characters, including TV's, stereo- of Africa meets Pretty Woman. Goldie Hawn goes to Africa where she's worshipped by a tribe of small "Hmm, yeah, like Gods Must Be Crazy but instead of the coke bot-, tie, it's Goldie." BAROUD (1932) On ABC at 12.10am (Tuesday) SILENT film director and one-time scriptwriter Rex Ingram stars and directs in this tedious one-hump-or-two-camels, dunes and damsels romance.

Set in Morocco, Ingram is a sergeant in the Foreign Legion who falls for Zinah (Rosita Garcia), daughter of the Berber chief. Remember, though, this was made during a time when the Legion was still taken seriously, at least by Europeans. Beau Geste was yet to be twice remade and Carry On Follow That Camel seemed, well, unlikely. Come to think of it, it still does. SUSANNA (1996) On SOS at 10pm DIRECTED by Antonio Chaverras Susanna is a gritty look at everyday racism and mutual exploitation, built around the life of Barcelonian waitress Susanna (Eva Santolaria) and the slighdy crooked world that overlaps her own.

Susanna, a wiry botde-blonde on a rehab program, is summarily offered for sex by her boss as a conciliatory gesture to Alex (Alex Casanovas), to whom he owes money. Alex is delighted and falls for Susanna but before long Susanna desires instead to settle with young Said (Said Amel) a Moroccan butcher. Material and sensual desires knot and come asunder as lovelorn Alex's obstinate pursuit angers Said. Less soapy than it sounds, Susanna is a telling depiction of the inflated nature of our expectations. Doug Anderson is on holiday terrifying the French.

The rest of Europe has been warned. He is expected back on October II. One THE PLAYER (1991) On Seven at midday "IT'S A cynical, supernat-- ural, political thriller comedy with a heart. The Manchurian Candidate meets Ghost." This is just one in a blizzard of dizzy- ingly awful film pitches enveloping troubled studio vice-president Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) at the beginning of Robert Altaian's poisonous, ingenious Tlie Player. If the intentions of many films are signalled by the opening music, The Player's overture is an eight-minute tracking shot, which establishes me film's giddyingly ironic tone as it circles in and around the studio, eavesdropping on Mill and his pitches the Graduate II but Mrs Robinson's had a stroke) to return to Fred Ward's studio security man lamenting that "modern movies are "all cut, cut, cut, like MTV no-one does long tracking shots like Welles 's Touch of Evil any more." Mill is on the way out, his position usurped by new boy Larry Levy i (Peter Gallagher).

Levy propounds sacking film writers and drawing film ideas from newspaper stories. Mill might take on Levy, but he's more anxious about some threatening postcards from a writer whose pitch he "brushed off'. Foolishly, he meets the writer he believes is responsible but, becoming enraged, kills him. Oops. Mill descends into a Dostoevskian world of shadows, paranoia, guilt and Whoopi Goldberg.

Redemption beckons but Mill will sidestep it if he can and get Larry into the bargain. Any work of art as busily self-referential as The Player risjcs becoming exhaustingly smartarse or self-congratulatory. So it's a measure of Airman's skill that the layers add only depth not weight The triumph of The Player's finale, itself the finale of a movie Mill et al are solemnly bastardising throughout the film, is a salutary example of this. For most though, the pleasures are in the details, the overheard scraps, the white noise fussing in Griffin's ears: "OK, it's Out SMH The Guide, September 13-19, 1999.