Ninety Minutes Of Inane Talk About Rugby League, And You Know Tv Has Gone To The Dogs

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday April 24, 2003

Bruce Elder

True Stories: Diverted to Delhi

10pm, ABC : One of the problems with globalisation is that too often it produces a no-win, rather than a win-win, situation. What would you do if you were a large company eager to engage in a little telemarketing? Would you employ telephone salespeople in Delhi who are paid $US40 ($64) a week (with no benefits) and speak to your potential customers with an Australo-Indian accent, or would you act honourably and employ local salespeople at five or six times that? The Delhi people are well educated and grateful for the work. You'd get a lower level of salesperson in Australia. Isn't the Delhi situation just exploitation? Or is it giving work to the Third World which people in the First World don't want to do? This is a subtle and intelligent Australian-made documentary looking at the training of Indian graduates eager to acquire an Australian accent, a familiarity with the Australian vernacular (though how ``dunny" is going to become useful in telemarketing is never explained perhaps, ``I know what you think of telemarketers and, yes, it does make you want to go to the dunny"), an Australian name (Sanjeev becomes Sean) and a regular job. The success rate for telemarketing calls rarely rises above 3 per cent. That's 97 rejections for every 100 calls and only $US40 a week (with no benefits) for such unremitting humiliation.

The Kumars at No. 42

8.30pm, ABC : The guests at the Kumars' house tonight are Shane Ritchie (another one of those British actors you've never heard of he's in Eastenders) and Robin Gibb. Gibb is singularly unimpressive but Ritchie does crack a great gag about the Academy Awards. It is true that this series is better than the last one but that still doesn't make for memorable viewing. Sycophants and incompetents are the twin premises upon which the one-line joke is built.

The Footy Show

9.30pm, 9 : There can be few more disturbing trends in modern television than the belief that 90 minutes of opinions and laughs (and it really doesn't matter whether it's The Fat on ABC, this rugby league shocker or the equivalent from Melbourne which is shown on Nine at 11.30pm ) is worthy programming. Let's be honest about it. The only reason that we have hour after hour of nonentities nattering about nuances in games which have no nuances is because it is cheap. All you have to do is stick a few bozos in a studio and ask them a series of banal questions and, hey presto, you've got 90 minutes of entertainment. There's really no expertise. This is just bringing the pub into the living room. The only difference is that there's not the sound of fruit machines in the background and the people talking don't slur their words well, they don't slur their words with regularity.

Inspector Rex

7.30pm, SBS : Is there another English-speaking country in the world where there is a free-to-air channel which is prepared to show, at prime time, a subtitled Austrian crime series in which the hero is a dog? God bless SBS for reminding all the Anglophiles in our midst that the world of television does extend beyond the hegemony of Britain and the US. This is a fun series and Rex, unlike Francis the mule, doesn't talk. He just investigates and saves lives as a dog should do. Tonight's episode is about a very Austrian kind of murder. A group of mountain climbers fall to their death. Can Rex work out in his doggy head whether their deaths were accidents or whether he is investigating a murder? Of course he can. He's a very clever doggy.