Green Guide€™s Critical View
The Age
Friday February 26, 2010
FREE TO AIRCAN WE HELP?ABC1, 6.30pmWOW, just when you think that everything is more or less OK, along comes a story to remind you that the world is really just millions of helpless individuals caught up in a random series of unbearably sad events. Then you die. Tonight, on this curious little program, we meet 80-year-old Sam Donnelly, who has asked the team to find his daughter Linda, who he hasn't seen since she was a little girl. TIM ELLIOTPAY TVHOLIDAY SHOWDOWNLifeStyle, 7.30pmMORE fish-out-of-water fun as two British families take each other to their favourite holiday destinations. The Kent family are heavy-drinking, junk-food-eating party animals who enjoy spending their holidays in the little Britain that is Tenerife. But they are in for a shock. The Wilson family take them to Luxor in Egypt. The food, poverty, insects and appalling lack of theme pubs proves so traumatic that not even the city's famous temples and camel rides can cheer them up. Relations are just as strained in Tenerife, where the Wilsons are shocked that the Kents' 16-year-old son is allowed to get legless with his dad. BRAD NEWSOMEMOVIERUNAWAY JURY (2003)Channel Nine, 10.30pmIN GARY Fleder's Runaway Jury, based on the bestselling novel by John Grisham, Nicholas Easter (John Cusack) tries unsuccessfully to get out of jury duty, and ends up selected for the trial of a gun manufacturer charged with allowing its weapons to be sold to mass murderers. Who is right: prosecutor Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman) or the defence's expert, the superbly named Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman)? Though Fitch is a very bad man, he is far more charismatic than the dreary Rohr and oddly likeable. Hackman steals the movie, which is made easier by the fact Hoffman is badly cast. Not for one moment does he look like a lawyer you would want to hire. Cusack, though, is perfect as the mysterious Easter, with whom the audience has a complicated push-pull relationship. Well crafted and one of the best Grisham adaptations. SCOTT MURRAY
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