Horror in the East - Turning Against the West, (BBC2, Monday)
Irish Film and Television Academy Awards, (RTE1, BBC1, Monday)
The Gambler (Channel 4, Wednesday)
Advertising (Most channels, nightly)
Do certain nationalities have a greater propensity for cruelty than others? Ninety per cent of atrocities in the Bosnian war were apparently committed by Serb forces - rape camps, burnings, starvation; particular refinements of cruelty.
The Germans stand out in modern history. Those who argue that the death camps were run by a secretive minority forget that half a million Jews were killed, "in the field", by SS forces working alongside the German army. Not to mention all the other barbarities dished out to Poles, Russians and anyone else deemed subhuman.
Horror in the East examined similar actions carried out by the Japanese in the second World War. Apparently, the Japanese treated POWs comparatively well in the first World War, allowing German prisoners brew their own beer and making them feel so much at home that many Germans stayed on in Japan and added their customs to the culture. So how did the Japanese army turn into something capable of ferocious cruelty, not only in its treatment of Western POWs but with regard to its wholesale atrocities against the Chinese, most notably in the "Rape of Nanking"?
Rape is the appropriate word. Japanese soldiers seemed to have a particular fondness for this vile practice, with their "comfort women". But, unlike the Germans, they have been slow to apologise or pay reparations for this, and their recalcitrance has in many ways compounded the original offence. This programme claimed it was a change in the training of Japanese soldiers in the 1920s which created this appetite for brutality.
As Japan sought to expand, it needed a more savage army, working with blind obedience to Emperor Hirohito, who was regarded as a deity. But the programme dealt too briefly with this aspect, using the anecdotes of a few self-justifying soldiers about the harshness of training and then quickly getting into descriptions of various atrocities, already well-documented.
Mind you, the almost nonchalant way that old soldiers recalled raping and killing was shocking. "We thought they were animals," one soldier said of the Chinese. "If we thought, for a moment, they were human, we wouldn't have killed so many." Old archive footage was brilliantly spliced with lingering camera shots of contemporary pagodas and manicured landscapes, contrasting, perhaps intentionally, their neat and disciplined aesthetic with the gleeful brutality being described.
This is the first of two programmes - the second will deal with the plight of Western prisoners. This one ended with newsreel footage shot by the Japanese of thousands of British soldiers in Hong Kong forced to stand along the roadside - "mongrel soldiers", shrieks the army commentator - and pay homage to the incoming Japanese commander. It was a poignant sight, the long line of soldiers, all staring passively in stunned disbelief. The Empire humiliated, but of course they couldn't have known what lay ahead.
There was a nice cross-Border aspect to the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards in Belfast. The amphitheatre of the Waterfront Hall was lit in that swirling Riverdance blue which now seems to bathe all award ceremonies, and the nominee lists were heralded by a staccato drum roll that sounded suspiciously like an Orange band.
Marie Jones was a refreshingly lively host, but maybe a bit too lively, with some rather risque jokes, introducing Lorraine Keane of TV3 as someone who "made her living on the streets". Oops, "on the road, we mean, with AA Roadwatch". Nervous laughter. Production people were then praised, including key grips. "Oh, I do like a good grip" she ooh-aared, with a Les Dawson wink.
By the time she got to Barbarella and the orgasmatron, I didn't know what she was going to come out with next. Nor did the people sitting behind her, who bore it all with the rigid animation of crash-test dummies. One also wondered if the nominees knew they were being filmed when the screen was split, Oscars-style, to show us their faces anxiously awaiting announcements.
Some of the reactions were blunt indeed. "He began his career . . ." began the announcer and one of the split screen nominees - a she - shook her head in despair. Once it was clear that the Best Director award was going to "somebody connected with The Commitments (i.e. Alan Parker), fellow nominee, Peter Sheridan, seemed to involuntarily come out with an epithet more applicable to his upcoming Borstal Boy film. Or it could have been "Oh, sugar" - it was hard to work out with all those swirling blue lights.
And what of the nominations for arts programmes Cursai Ealainne and Later with John Kelly, both of which have since been summarily axed by RTE. Kelly is rumoured to be returning with a new show, but RTE should hang its head in shame at the way it has abandoned the arts. Not that TV3 or the others are much better - BBC2 has recently run down its excellent Late Review.
Indeed, some of the best (only?) TV coverage of the arts, at present, can be found on the City Arts programme, which the cable company NTL puts out in the Dublin area. With no time constraints, the low-key NTL presenters pay lengthy visits to places such as the Museum of Modern Art or George Bernard Shaw's house, and then repeat it all for the rest of the week, in between bursts of the Spanish news and improving, civic-minded features about cleaning up the canal. Why weren't they up for an award in Belfast?
Varied and constant gambling is a fascinating activity which rarely features on our screens, perhaps because the wider world doesn't share the compulsion and lonely neurosis of the chronic gambler. The Gam- bler was an intriguing "fly on the dice" in this regard. Channel 4 gave writer and gambler Jonathan Rendall £12,000 to flutter as he wished, from slot machines to racetrack and followed his progress over three episodes.
Suave and quick-witted in that likeable rogue sort of way, Rendall was an ideal subject, but, at first, I thought the programme was going to be far too artful for its own good, with a busy jazz score and jump-about camera angles by young filmmakers who've seen far too much Scorcese. But it soon engaged, as Rendall went from the sublime, like having a great run at a local blackjack table where he'd always lost privately, to the ridiculous: buying £100 of lottery cards and scratching them all off at the local pub. "It's a long time since I used my wrist like this," he said, with a sly wink at the camera.
The programme also offered a melancholic vision of old England, with deserted race tracks, seaside amusement arcades and a provincial boxing match held under the harsh lights of a hotel ballroom, with ageing wideboys and their gangster moll companions, exchanging wads of cash. Rendall has a dutiful respect for this culture, but he gets more ambitious as he moves on, and has Las Vegas in his sights, if ambition is what that is . . .
Advertising has a reputation for being up to speed on popular culture, for parodying the latest sporting controversy, or running ads for fizzy drinks or chewing gum, which, with their druggy graphics and language ("Get the Buzz"), cleverly ape the highs of the Ecstasy generation. How odd, then, that a good two years after the New Lad phenomenon has run its course in the print media, we should get all these ads where, nudge, nudge, a bloke knows his priorities. Like the one about the guy who sees an incoming jealous partner and quickly swaps his beloved lager for a coke so it won't go to waste when she dumps a drink over him. But the comic timing is lost because you know what's coming. Or then there's the woman who comes in while her bloke is watching the football results. She's in distress. "I've just seen the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse," she says. "Oh really," says the bloke, distracted. But hold on, he's watching the Premiership.
British soccer? The whole idea about Fosters's commercials was that they were about Australian machismo, and a parody of it. Like the guy who greets a scantily clad female stranger near his farm. "Oh I'm glad you're here. You can give me a hand building this wall." We've also had a lot of blokes on their own, smiling at their steering wheels, or at home, lying on a big bed, and so transported by the ultra-reality of DVD images, that, again, a drug-induced state or something much more cheerful and auto-erotic is suggested.
But advertisers should be aware of all those ads in the 1980s featuring allegedly cool fellows in loft apartments, throwing on shirts and pulling out ready-made meals. Surveys discovered that most viewers, especially women, perceived the men to be sad bastards with no friends or girlfriends and hardly a stick of furniture, never mind a working cooker.
In advertising parlance, such role models were less likely to have a fresh head of lettuce in the fridge than a human one in the boot of their odorous Porsche. Most of their time seemed to be spent on their own, watching endless hours of television, just like . . . oh, no . . . a TV critic or something. Good God, I think I'll give Jonathan Rendall a call, it's time to go down the bookies.