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SCMP Reporter

TIMES are hard when you have to recommend a Chuck Norris film as the best on television. Code of Silence (World, 9.30pm) is strictly formula stuff, but with enough hints of Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry films to make it mildly enjoyable.

  Code of Silence is full of routine rough stuff and just about avoids the kind of self-parody that Norris handled so badly in all those noisy Vietnam films he made, starting with the jingoistic romp Missing in Action.

  There is no 'Nam significance in this one, just a maverick Chicago cop called Eddie Cusack (Norris), a raid on a drug den and a major gang war. Throw in some South American nasties and a beautiful girl who is forced to hide out at Norris' apartment (refusing all offers of conventional police protection) and what you have is what you get.

  Norris, as if I need to point this out, has an independent streak and wants to nail the gang his own way. Commander Kates, who is probably a fat black man, is not so sure.

     THE melodrama-of-life Tap (Pearl, 9.30pm) has little to recommend it, not even an appearance by Sammy Davis Jr as a man who creates a revolutionary new style of dancing.

  Gregory Hines stars as Max Washington, a man born to dance, but who ends up in prison instead.

     I HAVE never been on the end of a Manoeuvre 11, as featured in Between the Lines (World, 12.40am), but there was a time, in the riot-prone 1980s in Britain, when it became the police tactic of choice.

  Manoeuvre 11 is defined in the police handbook as 'cantering horses into a crowd in a manner indicating that they do not intend to stop'.

  In this episode of a programme that should really be shown at a better time - called Manoeuvre 11 - the tactic backfires somewhat, leaving numerous people injured. Detective Tony Clark (Neil Pearson) is, as always, caught between a rock and a hard place when he is asked to investigate.

     IF you fancy a spot of endoscopy over dinner, try Dimension X (Pearl, 7.15pm), a new science documentary series which, among other places, takes us on a voyage through the various orifices and channels of the human body.

     FOR once a nature documentary about the Serengeti that does not feature herds of stampeding wildebeest. Wings over the Serengeti (World, 8.30pm) is about the African vulture, a creature whose sole purpose is to help with the clean-up operation that follows a kill.

  This is not as nasty a business as it might seem. The lives of a wide variety of animals, in whole or in part, depend on the vulture's ability to keep the Serengeti vacuumed.

     NICE to see the best of British culture finally having an impact in Macau, in the form of The Benny Hill Show (TDM Channel 1, 11.30pm). Only You (TDM Channel 2, 8.45pm) also contains plenty of flesh, much of it belonging to Kelly Preston.

  She is the good-looking dame who accompanies our protagonist on a holiday to an idyllic beach resort. But are looks really everything? A pleasant romantic comedy, as predictable as ever. It also stars, in a musical cameo, Kid Creole and the Coconuts.

     FILMS on Cable Movie Channel:   That Was Then, This Is Now (7.00pm). A delinquent kid, alienated from society, clings to his relationship with his adoptive brother - then freaks out when the brother gets a girlfriend.

  Brat-packer Emilio Estevez wrote the script from S.E. Hinton's young-adult novel, and also stars. Cast includes Morgan Freeman.

  Fireman's Ball (5.00pm). Milos Forman's Tati-esque comedy of a small-town fireman's ball, arrangements for which turn into a sprawling disaster.

   Pin (11.00pm). Manic blend of horror and psychological thriller about two children, ignored by their parents at home, who talk to a life-sized anatomical dummy which their doctor father uses to educate his patients. The climax gets increasingly bloody.



Chuck's obvious code