Cliffhangers all around

This column first appeared in the Age on July 20, 2002

So much death, so much pain. Dr Mark Greene. Gone. Tara. Gone. Oliver Stone. Gone. And tomorrow night SBS begins it's stunning, but extraordinarily depressing, four-part adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, Les Miserables. (8.30 pm, for the next four Sundays.)

I'm not sure how, but I have managed to miss the previous 26 times adaptations, including the musical. This version stars Gerard Depardieu as the convict/saint/ Mayor, Valjeran, and John Malkovich as the police inspector who relentlessly pursues him. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the tragic Fantine whose daughter Valjeran rescues and raises as his daughter. Depardieu gives a powerful but restrained performance. Malkovich is chilling, as he always is (you have to wonder whether the man is playing himself, so skilled is he at cold and heartless villains.). The first 30 minutes is rocky as the show establishes its characters in a fairly heavy handed style, but from then on it is compelling melodrama - though not for the faint hearted.

This week the ABC begins its much-heralded new drama series MDA (Medical Defence Australia). It is the kind of show you would get if Law and Order mated with ER and follows the professional and personal lives of those who work for a medico-legal organization that defends doctors and compensates patients. Award-winning actress Kerry Armstrong is exceptional as Dr Ella Davis, one of the key negotiators, but it is not clear yet whether the script, storyline and production values will bring as much class to the show as she does. Jason Donovan is wooden, but then the character he plays, the prosecuting lawyer Richard Savage, is supposed to be impenetrable. Aaron Pedersen has been great in everything else he has done (Wildside, Water Rats) but he doesn't get much of a look in the early episodes. Certainly it's a show worth keeping an eye on.

On Monday and Tuesday night this week Channel Seven wraps two of its series for this year, The Practice, (Monday 8.30 -10.30pm) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For those of you concerned that I would come up with an excuse to mention Buffy every column, you can relax. It is all over this week with an hour on Monday night (10.30pm) and a two-hour finale episode on Tuesday (9.30pm to 11.30pm). Fans have been tried by the increasingly disturbing downward spiral of its characters, to the point that you have had to wonder whether producer Joss Whedon was performing some kind of TV kamikaze. What I find remarkable about Buffy is that each year it totally works against audience expectations, spinning out wilder and wilder plots only to pull them together in the final few episodes, picking up themes that stretch back as far as seven series ago. The show began this year with the dead Buffy being bought back to life only to realise life is meaningless. But it is this final episode she is truly reborn as are all the characters that actually survive to the series end.

I must declare my hand and say I stopped watching David E. Kelley's The Practice a couple of seasons ago, repelled by its relentless emphasis on sexual depravity and violence. Hypocritical after recommending Buffy? No - in that show all the madness does some metaphoric work. In The Practise you can often feel it is done just to shock. That said, this is an impressive season wind up. It is tightly written and strongly acted with what feel like real, not pseudo, moral dilemmas - what does the firm do when it is one of their own on trial, and even they are unsure of her innocence? This week, it is cliffhangers all round.

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