The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 32

GREEN GUIDE 17 FEBRUARY 1994 Ten's 'X'tra-terrestrial show will grab yoii 3LTMSf VJ REYVTCD Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Sculley (Gillian Anderson) seek answers to strange encounters of the third kind In 'X Files'. approval to reopen the files, believing some involve the paranormal. Assigned to keep him on the straight and narrow is Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who, to put it mildly, is a sceptic. She has a medical degree, and believes that anything that cannot be proved in a laboratory cannot possibly be true. Mulder suspects Scully has been assigned to shadow him in order to debunk his theories; Scully the sceptic reckons Mulder is a weirdo.

Their first case last week was gory. Four teenagers had died mysteriously in an Oregon forest. No cause of death had been identified, but each had two wart-like marks on their backs. A substance found around the marks was unidentifiable. Mulder and Scully discovered that their graves had been tampered with; in at least one case, the corpse had been replaced with the body of something resembling an orangutan.

Further, a small metallic object perhaps a control device implanted by aliens had been inserted into the nostrils of each of the victims. Blinding lights in the sky and a suspension of time accompanied each of the deaths. By the end of the episode, Mulder and Scully the latter by now a little less sceptical had proved that something scientifically inexplicable had happened. Exactly what? Well, that was never really answered. But The Files is one of those whacko shows that really grabs your attention.

It is all highly unlikely. The acting is hammy, and the plot too frenetic. The relationship between Mulder and Scully lacks subtlety. But it is a ripping yarn, well told. Although Channel 10's early evening line-up is a ratings disaster Alan Jones Live has been a flop The Files, along with NYPD Blue, interviews about an issue in the news serve some purpose.

But Front Up is a waste of everyone's time. WITH other programs, SBS fared better. Doctors To Be (Sunday at 7.30 pm) is a Seven Up-style, eight-year record by the BBC of the progress of a group of medical students at a London hospital from the first, nerve-racking job interviews in 1984 to graduation and beyond in 1992. In the process, the series presents a fascinating portrait of what motivates young doctors in a health system not dissimilar to ours. It is worth a look.

Also on SBS, Face the Press has been resurrected, this time called The Talk Show (Monday, 7.30 pm) and hosted by newsreader Mary Kos-takidis (given a frizzy makeover to give her a new image) instead of Dateline reporter Helen Vatsikopou-los. The first edition was a bit of a Phillip Adams traded quips with Prime Minister Keating about music, philosophy and the meaning of hardly letting Kostakidis get a word in, and interrupting her most times that she tried. But, without Adams, it has potential. Masterpiece (Monday, 8.30 pm) returned after the summer break with an intriguing profile of the writer Margaret Atwood. It was a good start to the year.

Future editions bring us Stevie Wonder, acclaimed Canadian cellist Ofra Hanoy and The Firm's director, Sydney Pollack. Masterpiece looks like a winner again. ROSS WARNEKE's guide to weekend viewing appears in Saturday Extra. ROSSWARNEKE IS IT fascination with the paranormal or simply paranoia that makes stories about aliens so watchable? Particularly those that have aliens landing on Earth and taking human form. Remember the 1956 film, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Or The Invaders, an American series screened by the ABC in the '60s about David Vincent, an architect who believed that aliens had infiltrated society but could not make anyone believe him.

Some go further. If it is an ability to whip up paranoia that lies at the heart of these stories' appeal, a surefire way of making them even more tantalising is to suggest that the clandestine agencies of government know the aliens are here, but are hushing it up to avoid public panic. The question of how much the FBI and the Pentagon know about the aliens among us is the basis of The Files Thursday, 9.30 pm on Ten). I did not expect much from this creep show. The fact that it was created and written by a former Disney employee more familiar with sitcoms was not a good omen.

But The Files, made by Rupert Murdoch's FOX Network in the US, is a surprise package. It is as spooky as Twin Peaks, and keeps you guessing right to the end and beyond. The premise is that the FBI which dissociates itself from the series in a small-print disclaimer in the credits has a number of unsolved cases with no earthly explanations. Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), an Oxford-educated behavioral scientist, gets In case you were one of the 98 per cent of viewers who missed it, Front Up is a half-hour show in which creator and interviewer Andrew Urban wanders the streets of Melbourne and Sydney talking to people selected at random about everything from their work to their love lives. It is all unstructured and seamless, and I cannot imagine how any of it would be of interest to anyone.

There was the bike-riding German-born sculptor who talked about his creative girlfriend, and the Mt Eliza beautician who waffled on about her philandering former husband, his snooty new wife, her own new husband and her jet-ski. There was also Drago, the overalled tun-neller who said nothing of any consequence whatsoever. Vox pops man-in-the-street Missing Persons, Law Order, the six-hour serialisation of P. D. James' whodunit Devices and Desires (beginning tomorrow at 8.30 pm) and the soon-to-return Northern Exposure and Picket Fences, gives Ten the strongest mid-evening line-up on TV.

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