Television
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SBS promotes New Gold Mountain as showing the plight of Chinese on the gold fields from their perspective. However, according to those I spoke with from Ballarat’s Chinese Library, that view is not shared by descendants of Chinese gold seekers. They are disconcerted by SBS’s depiction of their history
August 25, 2024
21 mins
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In the world of competitive chess, the rising strength of computerised programs with almost infinite memory capacity is changing the perception of the game. As detailed in a number of fine and fascinating films, documentaries and series, the hard-won title of Sommelier isn't likely to be snatched away, not now or ever, by some silicon-crusted cyber tasting tongue
November 4, 2023
22 mins
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Widespread love for 'Lord of the Rings' meant 'Rings of Power' drew a vast global audience to its first two episodes. What they saw is terrible acting, a script loaded with asinine gaffes and goofs, rampant wokeism and characters seemingly crafted to repel viewers' affection. This billion-dollar travesty of a series is worse than bad, it's excruciating
September 12, 2022
8 mins
The latest
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'Cornwall is different to anywhere else in the world and it’s that difference that I want to try to explain and tell you what Cornwall means to me,' declares TV chef Rick Stein, whose SBS series makes as fine a meal of the county's often curious history and characters as of langoustines, mussels and prime cuts of wooly pigs
June 18, 2022
15 mins
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'The Saboteurs' is a beautifully filmed period piece that focuses on one of the most crucial, but little known, missions of the Second World War, the destruction of the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant. To the Allies and resistance fighters who scuttled Hitler's bid for an atomic bomb, the physics were as mysterious as the danger and difficulty of the raid were obvious
February 26, 2022
13 mins
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Many slaves who made the dangerous journey to Canada would return, at great risk, to help others find their precarious ways out of bondage. These heroic souls became known as 'conductors' and their stories are inspirational. Amazon's 'The Underground Railroad' is a work of fiction. Remember this and it will help keep your balance when the train goes off the tracks
October 23, 2021
24 mins
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When Walter Tevis’s novel came out in 1983, it slipped past the mainstream media, but everyone I knew in the Melbourne chess world was familiar with it. Little did anyone at the time suspect that his fantasy of a female chess prodigy would be incarnated in the true story of the three Hungarian-Jewish Polgár sisters
February 6, 2021
32 mins
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Long before COVID-19, pandemics of a far more virulent nature stalked the imaginations of novelists and screenwriters, from 'The Andromeda Strain' to Hollywood's more recent fascination with zombie hordes. In Wiltshire, with the help of Russian assassins and the Novichuk nerve agent, those fancies took flesh
November 29, 2020
14 mins
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Where, oh where, would talentless luvvies go if not for the benevolence of the national broadcaster? Fortunately for the cast, crew and scores -- yes, scores -- of writers who produced 'At Home Alone Together' that's a rhetorical question, as the dispensers of taxpayer cash have concluded gags about dicks, defecation and despicable conservatives are so funny a fresh new series is needed
October 13, 2020
21 mins
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I saw my self this morning a little way from […]
August 28, 2020
30 mins
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The Netflix series is only four episodes, but that's enough for a revealing peek at New York's insular, secretive and ultra-ultra-orthodox Satmar sect, which opposes the very existence of Israel. 'The only real Jews are Hasids,' they preach, 'even a drop of assimilation instantly disqualifies them from being a real Jew'
August 9, 2020
20 mins
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My first thought was that the queen of crime could not have ended her novel as the BBC has its adaption -- 'adaption' in this instance being very broadly defined indeed. Yet the mini-series still makes for rewarding viewing right up until the re-written final chapter. That's when the wheels fall off with a thud
July 4, 2020
17 mins