Talking Point - Sunday

The Age

Thursday February 3, 2005

LIZA POWER

TALKING POINT REVIEWS: Nile: Crocodiles and Kings; Law & Order: Criminal Intent; The Private Life of a Masterpiece: The Third of May

Nile: Crocodiles and Kings, ABC, 7.30PM

Nile is a three-part series from the producers of The Blue Planet, examining the mysteries of the world's longest river. Spectacularly filmed, episode one, "Land of Crocodiles and Kings", explores the role the river played in the founding of ancient Egypt. It weaves the creatures of the Nile - crocodiles, scarab beetles, monkeys - into an elaborate fabric of faith, mythology and fatalism, and reconstructs the world of the pharaohs, whose role it was to act as spiritual go-betweens, appeasing the gods to ensure the survival of their people with annual rains. Seasons change, desert sands wash in golden tides across the drought-ridden plains and the Nile's floodwaters arrive, bringing a Noah's Ark of hippopotamuses, crocodiles, flamingo and ibis in its wake. Unfolding like a storybook on screen, Nile connects a mosaic of mountains, jungle, marsh and desert to the animals who inhabit them. Sumptuous viewing.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent, CHANNEL TEN, 8.30PM

Who needs Batman and Robin when you have Detective Goren (Vincent D'Onofrio) and side-kick Alexandra Eames? Sure, he's manipulative, eccentric and slightly manic but he is also brilliantly perceptive - with textbook psychoanalytical skills - and a mind organised like the Encylopedia Britannica. So what if most of the time you're left wondering if he's quite as dysfunctional and deranged as the misfits he hunts. As long as he gets the bad guy. "Semi-Detached", the first episode in Criminal Intent's fourth season, sees Goren and Eames investigate the death of a controversial radio DJ. Did he commit suicide, or did an obsessive fan knock him off? Enter the murky world of anti-depressants, placebos, detox institutions, obsessive-compulsive personality disorders and talkback radio to find out. In the end, it all comes down to a love affair (not the one you think, though) but the journey is always more intriguing than the destination, or in this case explanation. Criminal Intent is said to vary from its fellow Law & Order siblings by offering viewers an insight into the derailed mind of a criminal. As usual, however, Goren's derailed mind takes precedence. Shame he's such an obnoxious superhero - at least Batman had manners.

The Private Life of a Masterpiece: The Third of May, ABC, 2PM

Private Life examines iconic works from their conception to completion, and later, afterlife. In this episode it explores the preparation, execution and reception of Francisco de Goya's Third of May 1808. Now hailed as a courageous depiction of the events of May 1808, when Napoleon's troops stormed Madrid to quash a popular uprising, the oil on canvas provoked a furore when it was completed in 1814. The King of Spain, for whom it was commiss-ioned, rejected its unconventional portrayal of slaughter - from the determined stance of the troop of soldiers facing defenceless civilians, their guns pointed at victims encircled by pools of blood, to the entire canvas veiled in the black terror of the moment - along with its implicit condemnation of the monarchy and its practice of organised brutality. Goya's life, the illness that left him deaf and a recluse, is also explored.

Watch it for long enough and you can't help wondering what might happen if Goya had been around today to paint a scene from Abu Ghraib.

© 2005 The Age

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