TELEVISION LISTINGS

TELEVISION marrie-

A selection of television highlights, listed by day, in chronological order. Television listings compiled by Eddie Gibb.

I Moviewatch (Channel 4) 6.30-7pm. Amie‘s Junior and Tim Burton's animated feature The Nightmare Before C hrisrmus are featured in the movie review show. fronted by Johnny Vaughan.

I The World’s Strongest Man (BBCl) 7—7.30pm. Mountains of muscle compete in art extinct crater in South Africa for the title of World‘s Strongest Man. The Scottish interest is supplied by Forbes Cowan. who is a great advertisment for porridge.

I Public Eye (BBCZ) 8—8.30pm. Investigation into the killing of Danish tour guide Louise Jensen in Cyprus. With three British soldiers due to stand trial for manslaughter. Public Eye examines the behaviour of squaddies abroad.

I The Trial (BBCI) 9—‘).50pm. The doyen of Edinburgh‘s criminal defence lawyers George More is the focus of ‘One Angry Man’, with the cameras following him into court as he tries to get a series of clients off the hook.

I Ellen (Channel 4) 9—9.3()pm. Ellen tries to prove she‘s still a swinger. but fails.

I Harry Enfield & Chums (BBCI) 9.30—10pm. Looks like Enfield doesn't have any classic characters to add to old favourites carried over from the last series. Has his touch deserted him‘?

I Have I Got News For You? (BBCZ) lO—lO.30pm. Glenda Jackson and Hattie Hayridge join the regulars for some news- based comedy.

I Roseanne (Channel 4) lO—lO.30pm. Dan is suffering from thejitters over Roseanne‘s pregnancy and Darlene’s having an affair.

I The Word (Channel 4)

ll. 10pm—l2. 15am. The Street's recently departed Lynne Perrie (‘Poison' Ivy) is on the couch. plus music from US soul smoothies YMV.

SATURDAY 3

I The Browning Version (Channel 4) 3.25—5.05pm. With Mike Figgis's remake in the cinemas. here‘s a chance to see the original starring Michael Redgrave based on a Terence Rattigan play.

I mignment (BBC2) 7.15—8pm. In ‘Lord of the East‘. Julian Pettifer investigates the impact of the end of the Cold War on Vladivostock. formerly the flourishing eastern outpost of the Soviet empire. When its border with China was opened around 200,000 Chinese traders flooded into the area. destablising the economy and allowing the Russian Mafia to exert a stranglehold on ordinary people‘s lives.

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I Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush (Channel 4) 9—10.05pm. Passports in pocket and toothbrushes trousered. the audience assembles to see who Chris Evans will send packing.

I She’ three years older than the century and still fighting, as Ex-S discovered

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while filming a profile of llaomi Mitchison at her home in Carradale. Mitchison’s wide-ranging literary career is matched only by her life as a true

eccentric. She was born a Haldane, a family of Scottish landowners and eminent intellectuals. Her father was a scientist at Oxford and llaomi fell in with an emerging group of philosophers and writers, including Aldous Huxley, EM. Forster and

Wyndham lewis.

Mitchison married at the age of sixteen but hated the idea of a life of domesticity.

Instead she concentrated on writing and made her mark in 1922 with the historical novel ‘The Conquered’, followed in 1931 by “Corn King and Spring uueen’, which was praised by H.C. Wells. How aged 97, llaomi Mitchison has written over 70 books which have earned her the title of matriarch of Scottish letters.

Ex-S is on Tue 13 Dec on BBC1 at 10.50pm.

I And the Band Played 0n (BBC2) 9.30—1 1.45pm. Hard on the heels of World AIDS Day comes the television premiere of the docu-drama about the discovery of and early reactions to the virus. Based on the book of the same

name by campaigning journalist Randy

; Shilts who chronicled the spread of the

epidemic for a San Francisco newspaper.

The film stars Matthew Modine, Alan

i Alda, Steve Martin. Lily Tomlin and Ian

McKelIen.

l I Predator (Scottish) 9.40—1 1.35pm.

| Arnold Schwarzenegger in thejungle with a very big gun meets an alien predator.

I Ski Sunday (BBCZ) 4.35—5. 10pm. Return of the sports programme with a big following among non-skiers who switch on in the hope of catching a spectacular wipe-out.

I High Interest (Channel 4) 5. lO—6pm. Billionaire financier George Soros ‘the man who broke the pound' is really a deep and complex guy. reveals this populist business programme.

I The British Comedy Awards (Scottish) 7.30—9.45pm. Showbiz love-in hosted by Jonathan Ross. whose ability to lend credibility to such proceedings has long since passed.

I The Abyss (Channel 4) 9-l 1.35pm. James ‘Terminator’ Cameron’s scary underwater adventure about attempts to rescue the crew of a stricken submarine. Wizard special effects.

I Timewatch (BBC2) 9.50—10.50pm. The history documentary series investigates the contradictory life of ‘The Peasant

Premier’. Nikita Khrushchev, whose

I birthday centenary is this year. The

I programme reveals how Brezhnev plotted i to have Krushchev killed but lost his

nerve.

i I The Full Wax (BBCI) l0.05—l0.35pm. l Eddie Izzard makes a rare television

, appearance as Ruby's co-host in which he 1 objects to the fact that. as a transvestite.

‘. women have ‘total clothing rigth’. Also on the show is celebrated Hollywood

3 satirist and actress Carrie Fisher.

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I Married to the Mob (BBC2) lO.50pm—l.30am. Jonathan Demme’s

comedy thriller with Michelle Pfeiffer as a

gangster‘s moll who decides to start a new life after her husband is iced.

l I The Return (Channel 4) 1.05—3.05am. l The Vietnamese film industry is

developing fast as the country deals more openly with the west. Vietnamese director Nhat Minh Dang's film. made this year. reflects the tensions of a developing country.

I People First (Channel 4) 8—8.30pm. A behind-the-scenes look at how disabled rigth campaigners have been working for twelve years to persuade the Government to introduce a Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill.

I Cutting Edge (Channel 4) 9—10pm. Cameras follow two pensioners trying to stay warm during winter in the daily struggle for survival. where loneliness. illness and fuel bills are the constant enemies.

I Cracker (Scottish) 9—10pm. Last episode of the last story in the series which has left one police officer severely traumatised and another very dead.

I Martin Chuzzlewit (BBC2) 9.30—10.30pm. Mercy (Julia Sawahla) has suffered at the hands of her overbearing husband Jonas Chuzzlewit (Keith Allen). who in turn is living in fear of blackmail threat in David Lodge‘s well-received adaptation of Dickens.

I Film 94 (BBCI) ll.lO—l 1.40pm. Barry Norman turns his gaze towards Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior and the new

Macaulay Culkin movie The Page/mister.

MONDAY 5

I The End of Childhood? (BBC2) ll.lS-l l.55pm. Sarah Dunant presents a Late Show special about the threatened state of childhood in modern Britain. Are the best years ofchildren's lives being threatened by the commercial interests of a society that sees them as a lucrative market?

TUESDAY 6

I Open Space (BBC2) 7.30—8pm. Interesting (but useless) information: there are more dennatologists in San Francisco than the whole of Britain. This fact is used in ‘Scratching the Surface‘ as evidence that skin diseases. which affect over seven million people in the UK. are not taken seriously enough in this country.

I Ride On (Channel 4) 8—8.30pm. More from Muriel Gray and Sean Langan in the topical transport magazine show.

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I Without Walls (Channel 4) 9—9.30pm. The story of Carol White. ‘The Battersea Bardot’ who appeared in kitchen sink dramas like Up the Junction. is told using dramatic reconstruction and interviews with those who worked with her. including Ken Loach and Michael Winner. White specialised in playing working class survivors. but she succumbed to drugs and alcohol which led to her death at the age of48.

I london Kills Me (Channel 4) lOpm-midnight. First television showing for Hanif Kureishi‘s directorial debut which had most critics suggesting he stick to the day job. lmplausible story set in west London and the Home Counties centering on a squat-dweller‘s hunt for a pair of shoes so he can go to ajob interview.

I Omnibus (BBCI) 10.20—1 1. lOpm. Second part of the BBC’s Robert Louis Stevenson documentary which covers the last fourteen years of the author‘s life during which time he travelled extensively in the South Seas.

I Attack on Terror (BBCl) 11.10—12.45pm. Two-part dratnatisation of the killing of three civil rights campaigners by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964. The second part is on Thursday at 11.25pm.

I South Central (Channel 4) Midnight-12.30am. Andre reveals that he carries his mother gun for protection. in the series set in a bad district of LA which blurs the distinction between sitcom and drama.

I Chart Bite (Scottish) 6.55—7.20pm. Weekly instalment of the Scottish charts. band interviews and videos.

I Great Jouneys (BBCZ) 9.25—10.30pm. Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie travels to Korea in search of the country‘s music and culture. She attends a shamanistic ceremony which uses drums to evoke ancestral spirits and takes part in a drumming contest with a Korean percussionist.

I Between the lines (BBC 1) 9.30—10.20pm. When vigilantes posing as police officers shoot four drug dealers. Tony Clark becomes embroiled in a case which turns out to have M15 connections. I James Keenan . . . llo Such Thing As Bad Language (BBC2) l 1.15—1 l.55pm. Kelman's Booker success resulted in

85 The List 2—1 5 December 1994