tv previews
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday January 11, 2010
Travels With a TangerineABC1, 8.30pmThe era of the urbane Englishman abroad isn't over just yet. Following in the footsteps of Michael Palin and Dan Cruickshank comes Tim Mackintosh-Smith, an erudite and terribly British, Oxford-educated classics scholar. In this three-part series the intrepid traveller retraces the journey of a 14th-century Moroccan, Ibn Battuta, whose written account of his 29 years and 120,000 kilometres on the road certainly justifies its status as one of the greatest journeys of all time.Mecca was the young Muslim's intended destination but his zig-zagging travels across the Middle East and sub-continent make him something like the equivalent of an early backpacker.Mackintosh-Smith makes this a cut above the standard TV travelogue. For starters, he speaks Arabic and, having lived in Yemen for the past 25 years, has a genuine affinity for the Muslim world.With the help of his passionate if occasionally florid narration, he helps us see the bustling, chaotic, noisy cities of Morocco and Egypt, the destinations of this opening episode, as bastions of remarkable medieval architecture and traditions that are as alive today as they were back then, all of which make Ibn Battuta look like a perfectly modern figure - give or take a few wives and concubines.Superspy: The Man Who Betrayed the WestABC1, 9.35pmIf President Obama's assurances that all's fine at the US's intelligence agencies after the Christmas Day terrorist attempt fail to convince, neither will this "inside story" on how the FBI successfully flushed out a mole from its own ranks. Robert Hanssen was a 25-year veteran of the FBI who knew every trick of the spy business.Well, perhaps not every trick; even Maxwell Smart would have covered his tracks and disposed of his ill-gotten gains in a wiser manner. There's some drivel, which in any case is not substantiated, about how Hanssen's duplicity helped Osama bin Laden elude his post-9/11 pursuers, and blustery incredulity over the double-life that this church-going family man led. But the contents of this workman-like BBC-Discovery program might just as well have suited an episode of Get Smart.
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald
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