Saturday 15 August 2020

CORONATION STREET ICONS + THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th August 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

CORONATION STREET ICONS

Wednesday, STV, 8:30pm

And here we go again, yet another piece of emergency Covid schedule filler. Still, archive clips of Corrie are always a fun distraction. Episode one pays tribute to Ken Barlow, the longest-serving character in TV soap history. It reminds us that Ken, the street’s resident Guardian-reading paragon of righteous sense and virtue, a soft leather elbow patch in human form, has actually experienced his fair share of brawls and romantic entanglements over the years. No one who's never seen Corrie before will watch this programme, but if they do they'll be left with the impression that Ken has spent the last six decades embroiled in a never-ending orgy of mindless sex and violence, alleviated only by the occasional slapstick scrape. A lord of chaos living on the edge of reason.

AFRICAN RENAISSANCE: WHEN ART MEETS POWER

Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. It’s also demographically the youngest continent, with six in every ten people being under the age of 25, and far more culturally diverse than anywhere else on Earth. In this enlightening new series, British journalist Afua Hirsch visits three African countries - Ethiopia, Senegal and Kenya – to examine the ways in which they’ve reasserted their identities as leading cultural lights. The through-line in her opening essay is the extraordinary story of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, a powerful yet complex symbol of the country’s proud history of fierce independence. Hirsch also meets renowned artists who are keeping Ethiopia’s fecund cultural legacy and defiant spirit alive in the 21st century.

MANCTOPIA: BILLION POUND PROPERTY BOOM

Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

The Manchester skyline is in a state of flux. Expensive high-rise homes are popping up with such velocity, the city centre looks nothing like it did just a few years ago. Manchester’s population is set to double in the next few years. Manctopia, an incisive four-part series, examines the drastic impact this unprecedented regeneration is having on existing residents. We meet a local millionaire property developer, a man with a vested financial interest in eradicating homelessness, who plans to transform the red light district into a luxury residential hub, and a single working mum who can no longer afford to stay in the increasingly gentrified area she’s lived in all her life. The free market in action, folks.

UNREPORTED WORLD

Friday, Channel 4, 7:30pm

As you read this, billions of locusts are devouring crops and vegetation all across Kenya. As a result, farming families are starving and destitute. If this devastating plague continues, Kenya will be brought to its knees. The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the catastrophe. In the latest edition of this august foreign affairs series, reporter Sahar Zand travels to a country where agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 80% of the population. She hitches an urgent ride with one of the teams responsible for spraying infested areas with pesticide. Seeing as most areas in Kenya appear to be infested – in one particularly horrifying scene, Zand visits a town where the walls are caked with locusts – their task is Herculean.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

Sunday 9th August, BBC Two

The indigenous Australian football star Adam Goodes never set out to be an inspirational spokesperson for racial equality. All he ever wanted to do was play his beloved sport at a professional level. But as a prominent black public figure who has experienced blatant and casual racism throughout his life, he felt he had to make a brave stand and speak out. This intensely angering documentary examined the backlash he faced after forcing white football fans to confront the toxic vein of racism that has coursed through Australian society for centuries. And you don’t need me to tell you that institutional racism isn’t a problem specific to Australia. It’s all around us right now. Goodes’ message was clear: we need to talk, listen and learn. That’s our only hope of ever developing more empathy and understanding of what racism actually means. The film is still on iPlayer, I highly recommend it.

HOW TO BEAT… PAIN

Tuesday 11th August, Channel 4

Do you remember that late ‘80s/early ‘90s vogue for splicing kitschy old clips of public domain American films into contemporary TV documentaries? The geniuses behind this otherwise blandly presented health series certainly do. It’s as tiresomely unfunny now as it was then, a literally cheap trick.

 

 

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