BELLOWING in a Captain Birdseye accent, with a Ballymena twang, Alf Aylward (Mark Drewry) was the voice of raw racism. Was Alf mining for diamonds or for fosh fongers? Given the swirling dust, it was difficult to see. Not that it mattered anyway. All, a black hatted, foaming, "flog `im" from the physical force tradition of melodramatic camp, was there to suggest that, perhaps, Cecil Rhodes was not the ultimate racist.

Cecil, Alf's ranting proposed, was just a relative racist. Rhodes, BBC's eight episode, £10 million, autumn blockbuster is intended to be this season's Pride And Prejudice. But racism - relative or absolute - is a more explosive subject than effete social irony. By today's standards Cecil Rhodes, Britain's arch imperialist adventurer in Africa, was a tyrant. By his own Victorian standards he was, to many of his contemporaries, a patriotic, tough guy visionary, who had a country named after him.

Mind you, Cecil's vision, even at the time, indicated a delusion of grandeur which, just a few decades later, would have guaranteed him a prolonged lounge on a psychiatrist's couch. His mission statement included "the bringing of the civilised world under British rule and the recovery of the United States of America". For a 19 year old, this was ambition indeed. So much for our own poor craturs, who would be happy with getting the points to secure a place in college.

In form, Rhodes is essentially an African western with Enid Blyton characters. In sentiment, it gets so cutesy that, at times, it is a kind of Little House On The Veldt. The young Cecil is played by Joe Shaw, a Hugh Grant lookalike with similar public schoolboy enthusiasm and irritating, designer naively. Joe's dad, Martin an old dog for the hard Rhodes plays the mature Cecil. It's doubtful they can do for the ratings what Colin Firth's trousers did for Pride And Prejudice.

It's doubtful, because too much about this series is old hat. The opening episode's narrative technique involved a Princess Radziwill (Frances Barber) cornering the mature Rhodes in his study and admiringly telling him the story of his life. "When you first landed here, Cape colony was the forgotten end of the Earth"... "In less than 30 years, you have painted Africa red" . . . "You were not six weeks on the diggings and you were on your own.

Cecil, it is reasonable to assume, knows all this. But the princess's prompts set up the flashbacks and Joe Shaw's part of the gig. Normally, for the sake of seamlessness, such prompts do not draw an excess of attention to themselves. But Barber's accent is as grating as Captain Birdseye's. In fact, most sane people would be happy to escape into the bush from its Rooshian Meestery Vooman awfulness.

And over everything, there is dust. So much dust, indeed, that it's just as well Rhodes is described as a sweeping saga. A storm arrives and the screen goes light brown. In the background, the black miners are rhubarbing away and Captain Birdseye is preparing to whip every individual grain of dust that allowed itself to become so excited by the wind. Amazingly, when the dust settles - or, partly settles - all the dodgy wigs are still in place.

It is easy to mock Rhodes - but it is justified too. Subscribers to the Great Men notion of history may view the series as valid biography. However, on the evidence of its opening episode, Anthony Thomas (who made the unforgettable Death Of A Princess) has decided to mix adventure and history in an unpalatable cocktail of dubious exotica and decontextualised fact. There are bar room stand offs, lynch mobs, a wild landscape, marvellous panoramic skies and, in essence, a frontier spirit which comes straight from Hollywood westerns.

Rather than Britain recovering the United States of America, American film tradition has annexed this slice of British Victoriana. Perhaps that reflects part of Thomas's message. But it results in characters becoming caricatures, weighed down by their own pomposity. "What do you want from him?" Cecil's friend, Al Beit, asks the princess.

"To share the burden of greatness and the loneliness that is the consequence of greatness," she replies. Ah now, missus, even portentousness has its limits. It was shard not to suggest to her that it would be more in her line to shove off and do a decent day's work. By all accounts, later episodes shake some of the dust off allegations that Cecil was a paedophile. Perhaps there will be a dramatic twist in this Rhodes yet. But a shootout at the De Beers Corral seems more likely.

TONY Craig's vision was more modest than that of Cecil Rhodes. Tony did not set his sights on controlling Africa and America - he just sought a small (17 square miles) Caribbean island. Cutting Edge: Paradise Island followed his bid to persuade a few hundred "normal" (middle aged, middle class) people to invest £150,000 a couple into buying San Jose island to set up a self determining, safe community.

In November 1994, Tony and his wife, Lynn, advertised in the Sunday Times and the replies started to arrive. Anne Greene was retired and "looking for adventure". Bob Warren, an architect, relished the opportunity to design the buildings for such a community. John Bailey, a carpenter, did not have the £150,000 but offered his skills instead. Mr Bailey was not invited to the group's inaugural meeting. Lucky Mr Bailey.

From the outset, the putative islanders were an unlikely crew - pragmatists acting as romantics. They were hard headed business types with Robinson Crusoe complexes. Decorum insisted they trust each other, but how could they know that there was not a demented axe murderer among them? How could they vet each other? Who would vet the vetters and the vetters' vetters? There was paranoia amid the pleasantries. They had all read Lord Of The Flies.

Anyway, Tony, pioneering spirit that he is, dismissed the idea of police records and psychological profiling. He assured the doubters that his vision and their integrity was a perfect mix. He set off to buy San Jose, which nestles off the coast of Panama. He stayed in hotels and generally took his time. The Robinson Crusoes back in bleak Britain got restless.

Eventually, however, Tony met the owners of San Jose. They were like a pair of James Bond villains and they wanted £22 million for the island. The group was prepared to pay a maximum of £12 million. Then the story broke. Tony's former wife saw him in a newspaper. His past was revealed: he had been done for shoplifting and assault and had faced a charge (of which he was found not guilty) of sexually abusing his daughter.

He spoke to camera about his childhood in orphanages. It did sound horrific, as though the places had been run by Alf Aylward. Then he denied that he had a former wife and daughter. "These people do not exist," he spat. Cut to a photograph of Tony with his daughter in his arms. The Robinson Crusoes freaked and burrowed deeper into suburbia and the sanitised, flower box villages of middle England. Tony and Lynn can't be found. And, by the way, the US army dumped nerve gas on San Jose during the second World War. An absorbing documentary with the pace of a thriller.

LONG shots of Roscommon landscape, with mirror lakes inverting deep blue skies, were the panoramic equal of anything in Rhodes. They featured in 1:4 - So Much Better Than Bingo, RTE's contribution to an EU broadcasting initiative designed to challenge negative stereotypes of old age. Groups from Boyle and Elphin opened their doors to the cameras, keen to show that life really begins with the pension.

But in close up, the soulful panorama told a different story. This was a landscape of empty houses and of old people living alone. Television reports of attacks on the elderly were replayed. Clearly, this was no pensioners' Eden. But adult education, drama, creative writing and crafts have restored senses of purpose and community among the aged.

The acting classes - generally, rehearsals take place in each other's homes - were telling. Not so much Kids from Fame efforts, the acting classes dispensed with such high energy routines in favour of high moral fables. It was hard not to believe that at least some of the cast were taking pleasure in being able, albeit in character, to give a solid dressing down to their neighbours. It was clear that drama in closed communities can be therapeutic in a variety of ways.

Principally though, this was a documentary about people not giving up. "When you're old and you've seen a lot of ups and downs in life, you get more tolerant - you let people be themselves," said one of the women. Accompanying the luscious landscape shots, we heard the same woman talk about the parallel between the seasons of life and the colours of the seasons: the browns of autumn and the greys and whites of winter.

Perhaps she had overdosed on the creative writing classes, but she sounded sincere and happy. These people's gig is better than bingo, alright, and their positive attitudes were infectious. But there are other stories from beyond pensionable age and seek help is not always a viable answer Still, this was a well framed little documentary, so long as you, realised that self determination is not always an option as the years clock up.

FINALLY, Great Railway Journeys brings us back to Rhodes. This week's trip covered 3,000 miles through Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanganyika. Our guide, Henry Louis Gates Jr, a Harvard professor of African American studies, mentioned Cecil on a number of occasions. Henry was not terribly impressed by the imperialist who, had he had his way, would have "recovered" the United States for Britain.

Given Henry's profile, we might have expected more than the Roots tourism he offered. Perhaps the problem was that he brought his white wife and two tooth braced, all American daughters on the trip. Whatever the cause, Henry delivered suspiciously sentimental lectures as his daughters counted down the days until they could fly home to McDonalds.

This was National Lampoon's Safari Vacation. It was a pity too.

Naturally Henry played the Chevy Chase role. Visiting Victoria Falls he said: "Niagara Falls looks like a shower beside this thing." That, surely, would put his whingeing Yank daughters in their place. Not quite. They just ticked off another day. Henry had wanted to turn the trip into a sermon on colonialism and racism - fair enough - but, even more than Joe Shaw as the young Rhodes, he was so enthusiastic he was embarrassing. Anyway, after raising such daughters, you couldn't have any sympathy for him. It works better when the field work precedes the books, professor.