DR VON HORRORHAT
For the Canberra Times, 15 August 2006


While it's tempting to slump, glassy-eyed, clutching the remote and tapping endlessly through the cavalcade of crapology, pausing for only a nano-second on each channel to identify which particular repeat of steaming poop is on, we should probably start looking at the TV guide instead, to prevent nasty shocks.

Only last week during a late-night flick-about, I came across a sinister man with a Germanic accent in a black homburg and surgical gown, clutching a ramshackle penis still attached to a scrotum, but not to a person.

This was not, as you might expect, some badly-written scene from, say, CSI Klagenfurt, but SBS's mercifully concluded Anatomy for Beginners, in which Dr Von Horrorhat (not his real name) did confronting and slicey things with bits of real, dead people (not to mention getting a nude woman on stage so somebody could draw ovaries on her with a Texta. I personally would have settled for a chart. Besides which, she had no pubic hair; and that is not educational. The 19th century poet John Ruskin, it's said, having only seen airbrushed nude postcards, was so shocked on his wedding night to find his wife had pubic hair, he packed up his tackle forever.)

I wish I hadn't seen those few minutes of Anatomy for Beginners. Although it was informative, it was also obscenely clinical and freaky, and was followed by an even more uplifting ad for herpes treatment and an ad explaining where you can buy the DVD of the show. I'd rather be stuck in a lift with Senator Bill Heffernan.

But it is evidence that there's something for everybody on TV, although sometimes you need to go round to a friend's place because they have cable.

- For all those hanging out for the new Samuel. L. Jackson movie, Snakes on a Plane, there's Border Security: Australia's Front Line, Tuesday at 7.30 pm on Seven. There's something mesmerising about watching ordinary people do their jobs in a place where extraordinary things can happen - such as drug importers 'fessing up, guys holding 567 credit cards or finding snakes down trousers (previously on a plane).

- For hospital administrative staff, doctors, grown-up school bullies, fans of out-there British comedy, and anyone who enjoys a spot of hallucinating, there's Series 2 of Green Wing, Mondays at 9 pm on UKTV, Foxtel, starting next Monday (21 August) and repeated at other inpenetrably obscure times.This surreal English hospital drama-comedy is from the producer of the Smack the Pony sketch comedy series, and stars Tamsin Grieg, from Black Books. Chief among its delights is an unflinching portrayal of casual cruelty - bullying doesn't stop at school but glides into the workplace safe harbour, under full sail. Green Wing makes meanness into a martial art and will appeal to people who like things quirky and acidic, with a few underpants jokes.

It's the only series I've ever seen which is truly, madly dippy: the next scene could be a joke about growing old and wearing a hairnet that smells of wee, or a dream sequence featuring the whole cast in silver skin and metallic mini-skirts. It would take too long to get you up to speed on the plots from the first series, which involve a literal cliffhanger in an ambulance; accidental own-mother-bonking; a narcissistic anaethetist; unrequited lust; fear of ageing; and a peripheral character personifying disarray and sleep deprivation, an archetypal mother-of-small-boys who finds flattened hamsters in her handbag, and forgets to pop a skirt on. If you missed the first series, you can grab it on DVD.

- Barking mad or gullible insomniacs can switch on Network Ten between 4 and 6.30 am most mornings to cop a load of caterwauling and cajoling viral evangelists who want our cash. May we presume this preposterous package came as part of a job-lot with Medium?

- For fans of political satire, no longer confined only to four minutes a week on the ABC's 7.30 Report (Thursday nights) with John Clarke and Brian Dawe, there's now also The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the Comedy Channel, Monday to Thursday 9.30 pm, which has proved that some Americans do get irony, and furthered the careers of Steve Carrell (star of 'The 40 Year Old Virgin') and Fox-News satirist Stephen Colbert (check him out on youtube.com). If you don't have cable, SBS has a best-of "global edition" of the Daily Show at 10 pm on Thursdays. The Daily Show has the budget, the writers, and the head of state to do a proper job of sending up political news. Sadly, we here in Australia are similarly served only by the boys' club at The Chaser, a cross between Jackass and Lateline with a budget of $2.50, which they spend on props.

DISCLOSURE: This column will be informing its readers of any pharmaceutical company-style knick-knackery which arrives. First in the bribe declarations is a pair of inadvisable socks decorated with the Union Jack, and a clicky pen, from UK-TV. I once also accidentally had a free lunch in the Channel 9 boardroom, before the present regime, and was studiously ignored by three frightfully powerful executives, after suggesting that behind his eyes, AFL Footy Show stalwart Sam Newman may be a whirling vortex of nothing. Whoops.