The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 77

77 OBSERVER SUNDAY 24 MARCH 1991 I Good Friday and her crooked gambler lover (Glenn Ford). A classic of its kind, a disenchanted companion piece to the more romantic Casablanca. Sweeney (left) and MitchelLPhotograph: Howard Barlow. If the software likes it, spin it The Sting, is the striking directorial debut of playwright David Mamet and stars his wife, Lindsay Crouse, as a psychiatrist drawn into the heady world of gamblers and conmen. The less you know about this film, the more you'll enjoy it.

Kiri Te Kanawa 10.1 5-1 2.1 5am ITV It's the two-hour South Bank Show, Good Friday treatment for Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, following 14 months in her busy life. She's recording in Vienna with Georg Solti, visiting her native New Zealand's first opera house, previewing her role in Richard Strauss's Capriccio, and even finding time to be at home with her children, and talk to Melvyn Bragg. Valdez is Coming Film 1971 11.20-12.50 BBC1 Ambitious, literate Western film debut of stage-director Edwin Sherrin, providing Burt Lancaster with a big role as an upright Mexican lawman confronting American racists on the Texan frontier. Self-conscious allegory on the Vietnam crisis. Gilda Film 1946 Channel 4 Magnificent mid-1 940s film noir, an amoral explosive triangle set in late World War II Latin America, featuring torch-singer Rita Hay worth, her ice-cold nightclub-owning husband (George Macready), lishment vein.

A Florida couple (Mary Beth Hurt, Michael McKean) discover that Daryl, the brilliant 10-year-old boy they're fostering, is an escaped android (Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform). Rest Eternal, Light Eternal 7.25-8.35 BBC2 The London Festival Orchestra performs Haydn's Symphony No 49 La Passone, Samuel Barber's Adagio, and John Rutter's Requiem. With soloist Caroline Ashton and the Hereford Cathedral Choir. Introduced by Debbie Thrower. Sfcyrunners 8.00-8.55 I TV Suzi Quatro and Gemma Craven are wearing the Anneka Rice gear in helicopters over the Solent.

Down below, Parliament's court jesters, Austin Mitchell and Julian Critchley, have the map and the clues. Mindless farce. The Dream 9.35-1 6.05 BBC2 Jeremy Irons in a one-man drama adapted from Dostoy-evsky's short story, and directed by Norman Stone (who made Shadowlands for television). The hero dreams he is in a paradise where people live in harmony. He teaches the people to lie and is transformed into the snake in the grass.

Omnibus 10.10-11.05 BBC1 'Tom Jones: The Voice Made Flesh': They're rewriting the history books about Tom The Bible In the Beginning Film 1966 BBC2 Actually only the first chapters of Genesis, adapted by Christopher Fry, performed very slowly by a reverential all-star cast, starting with a coyly draped Adam and Eve and concluding with George C. Scott's ferocious Abraham. Director John Huston steals the show, and makes up for his longueurs, when he communes with God as a twinkling Noah. Sammy Going South Film 1962 2.00-4.15 Channel 4 An interesting, uneven film, directed by the great Ealing alumnus, Alexander Macken-drick. It follows a tough little orphan's epic solo journey from war-torn 1956 Egypt to South Africa.

Edward G. Robinson is a big-game poacher. Grand Prix Film 1966 2.50-5.35 BBC1 John Frankenheimer's lengthy study of life on the European motor-racing circuit is always exciting, and often beautiful, on the track. Sadly, despite Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune, Eve Marie Saint, the film is frequently flat and banal off it. Daryl Film 1986 6.20-8.00 BBC1 Uneasy, but interesting and enjoyable family comedy-thriller in the KhiTe Kanawa (10.1 5pm, Jones.

No longer is he a joke, medallion man in tight trousers. Enter Jonathan Ross (inevitably) to tell us that he has a fantastic voice, and that we've been getting him wrong for years. But the fact is that he does do lewd things on stage. He does rip open his shirt front, stuff his hand under his armpit, and wipe sweat over his pecs. He does make it plain that his crotch is there to be looked at.

That's not what serious singers do. On the other hand, Madonna does rude things too and she's dreadfully serious about everything. The profile coincides elegantly with Tom's new album Easter Saturday and the UK tour. His son and manager, Mark Woodward, says: 'I want the public gaze to move three feet upwards and remain always with his It's understandable that a portly thirtysomething can't' want to see his old Dad being a sex symbol forever. There's plenty of old footage of Tom, which is always entertaining, and one can only agree that by the early Seventies he certainly 'wasn't getting the songs'.

These days, Van Morrison is writing them. House of Games Film 1987 10.10-11.50 BBC2 This fiendishly ingenious thriller, a film noir version of major documentary series beginning intensive care unit of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. The film focuses on four patients, their families, and the staff caring for them. It's the contrast of the ordinary and the mundane in the extraordinary presence of imminent death which is most affecting, and the documentary also raises the more obvious questions about high-tech medicine. Filmed in black and white.

Mask Film 1985 9.50-11.45 BBC1 Shamelessly enjoyable weepie, adroitly directed by Peter Bogdanovich, based on the newsreader, Rebecca Samuels, screams: 'Don't you want any bloody news Mike shrugs, embarrassed. The 10.30 news Will be five minutes late today. His sister, who helps out with the show, tells Mike: 'If I were at home I'd be resetting my watch In another room young Mancunian Pete Mitchell, a fan of the station all his life, he says, dreamily waving his hand round the room. 'Paul McCartney and Elton John played right here, you Piccadilly still records one expensive live session a week. Pete Mitchell is the soul of the station.

He keeps close to the new Manchester bands, treating them as his own prop- erty and interviewing them reverentially. He asks them quite forgetting he's now one of those journalists too, and asking exactly the same thing. He helped to organise one' group, James, to play on the studio roof, an event which attracted some 5,000 to the gardens outside. He hopes the great old days from his youth will return. The station is recovering from a severe shake-up after losing much of its audience when it split frequencies.

Julian Allitt, a former Westminster lobby correspondent, has plans to move the station to the nearby Coronation Street theme park, where visitors will be able to see programmes go out live. He has imported two enthusia-tic ex-Capital Radio executives, Mark Story and Keith Pringle, to control the programmes and reshape the station. They have a powerful tool to help them in an American' computer software package1 called 'Selector' which compiles the playlists for the. programmes. Keith thumps at the machine with a hacker's gleam in his eye.

'Parameters like timings and type of music are fed into the library management system. Each record is identified by mood, tempo, timbre. Then we press a button" and there is an hour's The package costs 500 per month to rent. It is awesome to see how easily two stations can be precisely targeted and managed. There's even a 'phone cut facility for researching how listeners are reacting.

Experience in hundreds of American stations proves that profits will swiftly follow but whose radio station is it? Not Pete Mitchell's. Mozart In His Time 9.35am-9.40pm Radio 3 Twelve hours of music, discussion and features on Mozart, beginning with a recreation of Mozart's First Benefit Concert which took place in Vienna, before Emperor Joseph II on 23 March 1783. In Their Elements Water 11.00-1 1.47 Radio 4 Wonderful programme by Rosemary Hart, first of four on the elements, in which assorted obsessives explain the appeal of water against a lush soundtrack. Thor Heyer-dahl and Robin Knbx-John-ston are eloquent about their ocean journeys, but most fascinating of all is cinema star Esther Williams not just an aquatic bimbo, but articulate about the permitted sexiness of screen swimming and how to nap in the pool. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 10.00-10.45pm Radio 3 William Blake's triumphant piece of prose, ripping into religious orthodoxy, is dramatised with Nicky Henson as Blake, and introduced by Professor Marilyn Butler, describing its context.

Blake's new biographer is interviewed in Kaleidoscope (Radio 4 4.30pm). JtoW Gone with the Wmd (J.JUpm). between two freedom fighters can survive independence. The Servant Film 1963 12.30-2.25am BBC2 In this diamond-hard fable (the first, and best, of the three distinguished collaborations between Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter), James. Fox engages perfect valet Dirk Bogarde for his new menage off the King's Road and lives to regret it.

One of Bogarde's finest performances. TV: Jennifer Selway Films: Philip French Radio: Anne Karpf Across I Flashy sort of lighting disconcerts Bert so (6) 4 One that's plucky cert, possibly, to enter well-paid job (8) 9 Look quickly, and deflect with a stroke (6) 10 Last man I suspect of staying power, (8) II Accommodation available after a flight? 13 Honestly speaking, it's flat (2,3,5) 14 Middle-Eastern port filled with cargo but lacking capital (4) 16 Turkish commander horrified after elimination of holy man (4) 18 To work inside one at a time in a condescending way (10) 21 Make a special effort to leave one with power (2,3,2,4,3) 23 Long-running charity show led by. he, oddly enough! (8) Everyman No. 2322 Brother against brother, 130 years ago: The American Civil War, Russell Twisk visits Radio Piccadilly and its hired computer. I'VE seen the future of British radio and it works hard.

It's Saturday morning at Manchester's Radio Piccadilly, one of Britain's most commercial radio stations. 'The offices have that used-up feeling of an airport lounge after delayed passengers have bedded down there for days. The carpets and furnishings have given their all, paper and empty coffee cups are littered around. Only the two bouncy DJs are chirpy as they drive their own shows. Two non-stop 24-hour stations Key 103 FM and Gold 1 152 AM transmit from studios just a few yards apart.

Through the glass I watch the two presenters, Benny Brown and Mike Sweeney, silently swaying to their different brands of music. Benny is loud. He is flown in from Germany -each week to present six hours of music for Key 103. He believes in socking it to selling himself, the station and the music 'harder, faster, louder'. He punches, the air to make his points.

He hands me his modest card. It has a Die- hire of a bright red futuristic train speeding towards me. the train is called Benny Brown. Underneath, it says 'Billboard Magazine's 1985 and 1981 International Radio Personality of the Year'. An American devoted to commercial radio, he regards the BBC as wimpish because it 'steals the taxpayers', money'.

The new managing director Julian Allitt says: 'Benny costs us a fortune but the listeners love Next door, ex-punk star Mike Sweeney, now in his forties and playing sweet standards, is looking a little creased after a late-night gig at the clubs. He's reading out a local appeal for a brass band to play at an Irish parade. 'There's money in he tells the audience, knew that would get oil He puts on a record and tells me how vital local content is to Gold AM. 'People looking for this band will always remember Piccadilly. Stuff about local streets is our lifeline.

The moment people think you don't give a monkey's you're He keys in another record and sweeps on enthusiastically. From behind the glass 24 Cut in volume; by the sound of it (6) 25 Competent at maths, disguising true name (8) 26 A model of excellence losing head In Spain (6) Down 1 Ugly object almost causing sound of (4) 2 Former boxer in inactivity, one who faces facts (7) 3 Dollars the man initially exchanged without charge (8) 5 Lowers a person with a rope? Doesn't help when needed (4,3,4) 6 Judge's chamber, which presents only the truth? (6) 7 Shown the way after row, embittered (7) 8 I inflamed one Conservative in my combativeness (9) 12 Run away from swell, too uppity, fast (5,2,4) 13 Called in abroad with an ape (5-4) 15 A light beer can make a Frenchman slip up (8) Fifth Avenue Girl Film 1939 1.25-2.45pm BBC2 Sprightly Depression era comedy starring vivacious Ginger Rogers as an unemployed girl hired by a Manhattan millionaire (Walter Connolly), who wants her to pose as a hard-hearted fortune hunter to discomfit his selfish family. One way or the other, everyone benefits from the experience. Gone With the Wind Film 1939 3.30-7.05 BBC2 David Selznick's Civil War doughnuts, Coop 17 Street bully, Robin, sitting on chimney (7) 19 Bright girt, though heartless, with a twisted grin (7) 20 Ancient Greek coin exhib-; ited by S. Murphy (6) 22 Foreign labourer set up no record (4) EVERYMAN No.

8320i G.J. Dearlove, Wokingham; Henderson, Glasgow; Ms Rochdale; G.E. Lawson, Leeds; E. Mage e. Sale.

AZBO No. 883i J.R. Beresford, Twyford; K.W. Crawford, Caterham; Turner, Leeds. Winners of Compotltlon Aiod No.

082 win appear naxt weak. EVERYMAN No. 2321 SOLUTION blockbuster (wonderfully performed, designed, photographed and scored, though at times troublingly inert) is a cultural landmark. Partly because the film is inextricably bound up in the epic, much publicised, Sturm-und-Drang of its production. Heart on the Line 8.00-9.00 Channel 4 Born in Belfast, John T.

Davis made an extraordinary film for BBC2's Arena called 'Power in the Blood' which focused on Tennessee's Vernon Oxford! a one-time country singer turned gospel which killed 620, 000, is marked by a preacher, on a tour of Northern Ireland. In this film, he looks at Nashville's songwriters. The Civil War 8.20-9.20 BBC2 This 11-hour series gained record audiences for America's PBS network. The first episode examines the causes of the war and the sequence of events that led up to the firing on Fort Sumter and the jubilant rush to arms on both sides. Near Death 9.10-3.40am Intimations of mortality for six hours: Frederick Wiseman's observation of the Pass the David Rose searches put Twin Peaks parties and finds the TV cult' is growing despite its critics.

SINCE an initial flurry of hype last October, published critical opinion has not been kind to David Lynch's television series, Twin Peaks. Our own John Naughton spoke of its virtues as a cure for insomnia. When the American ABC network abruptly halted transmission last month, halfway through the second series, reports described TP as 'a silly parody of itself. But out there, where the ordinary viewers live, the evidence is that Twin Peaks has become a genuine example of that rarely-glimpsed phenomenon, a cult hit. In Oxford, in Streatham and in Huil, people are organising Twin Peaks parties, which guests attend in TP costume, to consume Special Agent -Cooper's favourite refreshments, doughnuts and coffee.

The series' audience of 4.5 million a week makes it BBC2's second or third most popular programme. And this is a devoted audience, which anxiously seeks out tapes of episodes missed. When two or more TP fans are gathered together, they are prone to indulge in lengthy declamations of key lines and speeches. The cult status of Twin Peaks has not emerged by accident. Most critics not only undervalued its achievement, but concentrated on its most superficial, obviously bizarre features Cooper's aforementioned fondness for coffee, or the (relatively unimportant) log lady.

Still focusing on the programme's weird-and-wacky-ness, one critic famously described it as a 'post-modern it a a of on BBC2 (8.20pm) and thejilm the true story of Californian teenager Rocky Dennis (Eric Stolz) who in hjSiShQrt life came heroically to' terms with his Elephant-Man-like appearance through the devotion of his biker mother (Cher) and the Hell's Angels she hangs out with. Mortu Nega Film 1989 BBC2 First British screening for a movie from th-3 impoverished West African Republic of Guinea Bissau. Set in 1974 as the bitter war for liberation was drawing to a close, it poses the question of whether the marriage due course, ride off into the sunset with Cooper. Friends of Lynch attest to the fact that however much deadpan humour there may be in Twin Peaks, his purpose is calculated and extremely serious. It is not accidental that one of the haunting ballads by Julee Cruise, which punctuate the series, is called.

'Falling': the Fall is an idea very close to Lynch's heart. Between the extremes of Agent Cooper and demon BOB, Twin Peaks is a dualist, Manichean world, where good and evil, madness and sanity, order and chaos struggle in permanent conflict. These themes nowadays seldom receive attention from artists of Lynch's sensitivity and stature. Having said all that, Twin Peaks remains a highly enjoyable television film made with immense skill. In the hypnotic 20 minutes of the episode in which the identity of Laura's killer was revealed as he killed again, all the elements of TP's claim to lasting greatness were represented.

Leland Palm-erBOB murdered Laura's cousin as a stylus clicked like a heartbeat at the end of a record played hours before, Louis Armstrong's beautifully naive 'Wonderful World'. Cooper, sitting in the Road-house nightclub with Sheriff Truman, had just arrested the wrong man and gazed in horror as Julee Cruise was replaced onstage by the mysterious giant, who warned him what was taking place in another part of town. Even as Leland battered Madeleine, he expressed the anguish of his struggle with the demon and his grief at Laura's death. If one insists on placing this into a genre, forget post-modernist soap. Twin Peaks is the televisual equivalent of Mar-quez or Isabel Allende: magic realism.

Magic in all senses. ist soap opera'. If this were all there was to Twin Peaks, its success would be as great a mystery as the murder of Laura Palmer. Halfway through the second, 22-part series, the structure of Lynch's grand design is becoming discernible, and soap opera is not. A soap is like a fugue, its stories randomly sequential, line stretching into formless infinity in either direction.

Moreover, soaps are the work of vast production factories, collective enterprises from first script conference until final cut. Twin Peaks, however, stakes strong claim to be the first TV series shaped by an auteur. David Lynch conceived, co-wrote and largely directed it. The last word in editing was his, even in episodes which he did not direct. TP's most striking feature, and the true secret of its success, is its most unsoap-like symmetry.

At its heart, once the onion layers of corruption overlying rural America have been stripped away, is an epic struggle between good and evil, fought between the archetypes of Agent Cooper and BOB, the demon who possessed Laura's father. Cooper is not only (to put it one way, as Sheriff Harry Truman did last week) 'the best lawman I ever knew', he also has the power of redemption, some strange Lynchian version divine grace. Under his tutelage, Audrey has evolved from teenage slut to fearless crime-busting sidekick, saved physically by Cooper from kidnapping and rape, and spiritually from a life of vice. In the last episode but one she signposted Cooper's archetypal role, telling him: 'The trouble with you is that you're just too Those of us Twin Peaks fans prone to sentiment hope fervently that AudreyMary Magdalen will, in Corrie Folding Wheelbarrow only 34.95 inc This clever wheelbarrow is made in the UK and is brand new on the market. It is made by J.B.

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