Stay In For An Old-fashioned Night Of Collecting Capers

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday March 7, 2008

Lenny Ann Low

COLLECTORS 8pm, ABC1: This program is remarkable for its old-fashioned subject matter, its bright but not "lite" presenters and its far-ranging subject matter. Telling someone you are staying in on Friday night to watch Collectors is a badge of distinction, a sign of taste and singularity. Stay in for papier-mache furniture, a stumper of a mystery object and two passionate collectors. Dave Sweetman and his collection of 100 pedal cars are compelling, particularly when he modestly speaks of his love for the vehicles, his methods of collecting and his wife's edict he is allowed to spend $50 on cars and parts each week. Then there is Helene Czerny, an artist who has a penchant for human hair - she weaves it into baskets, stuffs tufts into quite beautiful translucent tubes and displays pubic hair in a series of Petri dishes.

FOR THE WEEKEND

SATURDAY

DOGSTAR 8.10am, Nine: A new animated series set in the year 2347 when humans have wrecked Earth and evacuated as one in spaceships. One such spaceship carried all the planet's dogs but it went missing in the exodus kafuffle. The very fetching canine Hobart, beloved pet of the Clark family, is on the spaceship and his owners and friends are careering through space using their chubby cat Boombah's highly sensitive smelling skills to find him. On New Earth, an evil chap called Bob Santino is manufacturing robot dogs and so begins a battle to find Hobart and the world's dogs. Character voices and narration come from such comedy luminaries as Marg Downey, Michael Veitch and Shaun Micallef, among others.

GARDENING AUSTRALIA 6.30pm, ABC1: The indefatigable octogenarian Peter Cundall once again points us in the direction of gardening wizards around the country. Bottle trees and their swollen trunks in outback Queensland, a mammoth cactus collection in Victoria's north and plants and planting tips for those facing cyclones in areas such as Darwin.

DOC MARTIN 7.30pm, ABC1: Surrounded by scenery that makes the heart scream for a cottage in Cornwall, Doctor Martin's tenacious grumpiness is a dramatic miracle. In the first of a two-part episode he faces a sickeningly corporate medical authority, a maniac with a gun and infected pasties. Top stuff.

SUNDAY

ROBIN HOOD 7.30pm, ABC1: Keith Allen is a bad man isn't he? A dark, wily and alluringly evil man as the Sheriff of Nottingham in this fine British series. In the first minute of tonight's episode he manages to snarl, leer, lie and then push a mute scribe off the side of a castle to his death. And all in a fur-edged cloak, a sculpted goatee beard and just a hint of dark eyeliner.

Meanwhile back in Sherwood Forest, a cloaked figure discovers two curious things. One, his buried bag of gold coins has disappeared from its hiding place at the base of a tree, and, two, Robin Hood and his merry men speak in a vernacular closer to a modern-day boy band than a bunch of outlaws marauding courageously through medieval times. "This wot you're lookin' for?" Hood says to the cloaked man, his hair fashionably swept across his forehead. And so it goes, a very watchable blend of wit, chic hairstyles and chicanery in the sun-dappled woodlands of England. Or, in fact, Hungary, where most of Robin Hood's forest scenes were filmed.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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