ER, Wild Africa & Buffy

This article first appeared in The Age on February 1, 2003

I have one serious piece of advice to offer this week: do not watch the first episode of the new series of ER (Channel 9, Thursday, 8.30pm) while eating dinner. A show that has always revelled in gore, this week it excels itself. I wont give details other than to say I could imagine the scriptwriters' meeting: 'How are we going to rehabilitate this Romano guy? We've overdone the bastard thing. People change channel when he walks on.' 'Let's do something so gross to him that people will feel sorry for him and his character will be forced, by circumstance, to develop.' 'Uh, huh, that's cool. I've got it, let's . . . .' well, you can watch, if you are interested, and see what it is they do do. A show that is fine for watching over dinner is Wild Africa, a six part nature series that begins tomorrow night. (Sunday, ABC, 7.30pm). It is fun and interesting - all half decent nature docos are - but despite the wonderful material they have to work with, Wild Africa pushes it luck on the style over substance front. It is heavy on the time-lapse photography and there are lots of shots of clouds fluffing and thinning. The geographic movements of the continent over the millennia are shown with tricksy digital work and the orchestral music (Wagner meets Tubular Bells) gets particularly overwrought when big cats chase their prey.

The series aims to put Africa's wildlife into its full environmental context, looking at geographic and seasonal impacts. I could have done with more of the political as well, especially when looking at endangered animals like the Mountain gorillas we meet in 'Mountains' - the theme for the first episode. The mountains prove to be such a harsh environment that we end up looking at a fairly unglamorous bunch of beasts (the Gorillas are an exception). There are the Ethiopian wolves that specialise in catching rats, a very neurotic moll rat, and bearded vultures that drop bones from hundreds of metres up, dashing them on the rocks so they can get to the marrow. If it is giraffes, elephants and wilder beast you fancy you will have to wait to the following week: 'Savannahs'.

The second week in February is a veritable traffic jam of new series so I'm getting this review on early: beginning on Tuesday nights, the week after next, is the first episode of the new season of Buffy (Channel 7, February 11, 10.30pm). In his summer film hit, Bowling For Columbine, Mike Moore talks about the high school as the focus of much stress and anxiety in American culture. In Buffy, producer and writer Joss Whedon takes us back to the show's high school teen shtick roots, where the anxiety Moore talks about is writ large. Sunnydale High has been rebuilt and Buffy is convinced that the ghosts of students massacred there over the years are going to cause problems. I must confess that the episode was a bit of a disappointment, but then my expectations are high. Willow is going through witch de-tox and Spike is lurking in the basement gibbering like a madman, so I live in hope, and I trust Joss Whedon to rev it up again - especially as this is rumoured to be show's the final season.

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