God's Will Be Done In A World Heading For Kingdom Come
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday December 9, 2008
RETURN OF THE BIBLE PLAGUES 8.30pm, SBS: Walk like an Egyptian or die like one? This series harks back to biblical times to draw parallels between assorted pestilences wrought by God upon the pharaohs and the expediting of numerous scourges as a repercussion of climate change. Mozzies, despite the best efforts of science, continue to spread malaria - killing 2 million people a year. Communities still sing and pray to their gods for salvation but grassroots activists are also busy, spraying natural pesticides, draining stagnant ponds and issuing protective netting. But it's not just Africa. Warmer climates and wetter summers increase the domain of disease carriers and Germany has been obliged to initiate anti-breeding strategies. Do we invent a better mouse trap or design a worse mouse? Are reverse eugenics the answer? Who needs interference from nature when we can independently wreck our planet. The future of our much-vaunted global society is already in jeopardy. Selfishness and arrogance have laid waste to the global economy and seem certain to speed the process. So stupid to be dying so slowly. Bring on the storms, the bird flu, plague locusts and Britney Spears!
PARTY ANIMALS 8.35pm, ABC1: Speaking of locusts . . . egotistical parasites and insatiable bottom feeders abound in the corridors of power. For every shark there's a school of remora and when a titanic personal event intrudes into the endless poker game played by members, their researchers and other staff, face-slapping reality checks ensue. So it was in last week's premiere episode when Scott, poised to enjoy a career boost and a possible dalliance with Ashika (from the other side), saw his well-lubricated brother, Jake, fatally spiflicated in a traffic accident. Scott and Ashika seek mutually beneficial comfort in the wake of this tragedy and he invites her to the New Statesman party later in the week. Things are progressing admirably until Tory tabloid hack Sophie Montgomery sours the moment with vicious rumours about Scott. Back in her office, feeling dudded by Scott and used by her slimy boss, James Northcote, Ashika leaks a retaliatory story about a senior Conservative minister, George Morgan. The acid is promptly returned by one of Morgan's minders, to the amusement of Northcote. Ugly seeds are being sown. Meanwhile, in Jo's office, Kirsty tries to milk a controversy for political benefit (and her own), but her finesse shows slender sign of improvement. After enduring a bollocking from Danny she retaliates when he tries to defuse the situation by asking her out. Ben Richards and Robert Jones have created credible characters who play hard and take no prisoners. Politics is war at its filthiest, without the refinements of the Geneva Convention.FATHER TED: OLD GREY WHISTLE THEFT, 8.05pm ABC2: Not much gas and gaiters but wonderfully offbeat humour when a rebellious young priest arrives on the island at the same time a whistle, belonging to the picnic area supervisor, goes missing. More eccentric escapades follow in Hamish Macbeth at 8.30 when a simmering family feud at the local funeral parlour erupts. Have marauding aliens, on a break from their interminable rectal examination program in America's Midwest, made off with a corpse from the cemetery?NEIGHBOURS 6.30pm, Ten: A rare sighting of Harold Bishop? Not long now for Ramsay Street veteran Ian Smith as the sudser's long-serving fuddy duddy. After 20 years of fussbudgeting, Smith's character has finally hit a problem he can't solve - prostate cancer. Can we expect a farewell to rival the tear-stained demise of Harold's wife, Madge, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer a few years ago? Or to equal the nation-stopping death from cancer (and pneumonia) of A Country Practice heroine Molly Jones in June 1985? Vale Harold - whatever! Later (10pm, SBS), the 1978 death of Jonestown loon Jim Jones and hundreds of his unwitting acolytes, is revisited in the amazing Jonestown: The Life And Death Of The People's Temple.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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