TASTY TATIES!
The Biggest Squid on CATALYST (Thurs Sept 4, ABC- 8pm) – Geekily cute scientist Dr.Graham Phillips brings us the dissection of a Colossal Squid (Mesonchoteuthis hamiltoni) found dead by a trawler near the Antarctic in May of this year. Very little is known about Colossal Squid except that they’re bigger, faster and much more predatory than their Giant Squid rellies – they can grow from anywhere from 50 to 60 feet, and perhaps much bigger. Given the fact that squid, cuttlefish and octopi are also the smartest of the invertebrates, you just know one of these is waiting for you to take a dip at Swanbourne to get revenge for the Calamari you had for dinner last week…
PARALYMPIC GAMES BEIJING 2008 (Sat Sept 6, ABC- 9:30pm) – Hosted by Adam Hills, Paralympian Louise Sauvage and Karen Tighe, the ABC is giving more in-depth coverage of Paralympics than any other network in the world. Not only is it nobler and more heroic that the Olympic Games, but there won’t be any advertisements, closeted male Aussie athletes insisting they have girlfriends, or close-ups of US swimmer Michael Phelps’ awful seventies pornstache!
THE BIG BANG THEORY (Mon Sept 8, Nine- 7pm) – I’m in two (scientific) minds over this- yes, it stars one of my primary fantasy husbands, the almost-certainly-gay and definitely-cute-as-a-button Johnny Galecki (who played the diminutive David, he of the ambiguous sexuality, on ROSEANNE) but it’s also a crappy US sitcom about two brilliant physicists who know nothing about life and love until a dumb but vivacious Paris Hilton clone moves next door. I hear physicist Professor Stephen Hawking is trying to come up with a theory of quantum string mechanics powerful enough so he can travel back in time just to murder the person who green lit this program…
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HOT POTATOES!
RUSH (Time and Date TBC, Channel Ten) – Whilst not exactly CSI: COONABARABRAN, this is nonetheless a quality Australian-made forensic crime/police procedural series, launched only a few scant weeks after Channel Seven’s similar effort, CITY HOMICIDE. Both shows are fairly same-ish in terms of content, all dodgy goings on with cutlery and shady drugs deals whilst the young cops think with their truncheons, but I think RUSH has a bit of an edge in having the better beefcake on the beat; sure CITY HOMICIDE has dreamboat Daniel McPherson busting caps in various asses, but RUSH ends the Mexican-Australian standoff by including one of my crushes of yesteryear, Callan Mulvey (who played Drazic on HEARTBREAK HIGH sometime in the late Cambrian era) as our hero cop, Sergeant Brendon Joshua. He even gets a nude scene in his introductory episode, so I’ll overlook all the rampant heterosexism about him in the promos and the fact that he has two first names. Of course, Mulvey can only do so much to offset the presence in RUSH of ultra-irritant Samuel Johnson, but every Phantom Menace must have its Jar-Jar Binks…
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SOGGY CHIPS!
WE CAN BE HEROES (Fri Sept 12, ABC- 10:05pm) – Homophobic, Racist and cultural-cringe worthy to the extreme, I have no idea how this series and it’s follow up, SUMMER HEIGHTS HIGH, became cult hits. The people who (rightly) abhor Little Britain series three for Matt Lucas’ racist caricature of Thai lady-boy Ting-Ting would be advised never to watch WE CAN BE HEROES, lest their heads explode from a mixture of disbelief and outrage. Chris Lilley portrays an offensive Asian stereotype here, and an offensive Torres Straight Islander stereotype in SUMMER HEIGHTS- what’s next? A Black and White Minstrel Show? Actually, I’d better not give him ideas…
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SPUDS IN SPACE!
DOCTOR WHO (Sun Sept 14, ABC- 7:30pm) – We’re into the home stretch of the final four episodes of season 4 now, and queer WHO writer Russell T Davies is cranking up the tension for the return of a major old school big bad next week. This week however, we have ‘Midnight’, a deceptively simple story in which the Doctor (David Tennant) and seven tourists on a beautiful planet with a deadly atmosphere that kills in six seconds (no, the planet is not Beijing) are trapped in their shuttle by an alien presence. What follows is a masterpiece of suspense- it’s a terrifying, nightmarish episode, made all the more remarkable in that the creature is never seen or even named and there are no special effects. It’s basically eight people alone in a room for 45 minutes, and it’s the scariest episode of DOCTOR WHO I’ve ever seen. Colin Morgan distracts viewers from the terror by being some top class beefcake, but the episode really belongs to guest star Lesley Sharp, brilliant as lesbian scientist Dr. Sky Silvestri. She starts off vulnerable and sweet and becomes absolutely chilling when she becomes…something else. With a simple vocal trick, Sharp makes the Daleks look like angry pepper pots and the Cybermen look like backup dancers from THE WIZ. Unmissable. Don’t make me repeat myself. No really, don’t (that’ll be funny once you’ve seen the episode!)
