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SCMP Reporter

If I were devising a schedule for television on a Saturday night, I would ban children and cooks.

It strikes me that this is the time that marks the start of an adult's weekend viewing. We have eaten dinner, so food, apart from a packet of nachos or bar of chocolate, perhaps, couldn't be further from our minds.

The kids are in bed, or should be well on their way, so mum and dad can sit down and watch a show of their own with out them.

Clearly ATV World thinks differently.

What does it give us to look forward to after reading a bedtime story or doing the washing up? None other than Yan Can Cook (World, 8pm).

It is, perhaps, irrelevant that I don't think Yan can cook at all.

I have never seen him prepare a dish that I would want to eat (and I love Chinese food), but watching him at 8 o'clock at night is tantamount to torture.

He is neither relaxing, entertaining, nor informative. Quite why the studio audiences continue to applaud every time he crushes a clove of garlic or chops an onion is beyond me.

But at the end of the day, and that is where we're at, who wants to watch a cooking show. Far from wanting to sound sexist, these are shows that mainly appeal to women. There are plenty of guys who enjoy them, but the majority are gals.

Such shows should be aired in the afternoon or early evening when cooks are looking for inspiration.

I can only guess at ATV's motivation. It is providing a show for women in the hope that it may go some way to pacifying them when the men want to watch the following programme, Macau Racing.

   The best film of the day is without a doubt Gentleman's Agreement (Star, noon), with that gentleman giant of the acting profession, Gregory Peck.

A magazine journalist, Peck goes undercover as a Jew in order to experience anti-Semitism first-hand for a series of articles he is writing.

It was Hollywood's first major attack on anti-Semitism and a brave one, too. The film was personally sponsored by producer Darryl F. Zanuck, which was a little surprising because, unlike many movie moguls, he wasn't Jewish.

If you have Star, record Gentleman's Agreement and watch it in place of Hudson Hawk (Pearl, 9.30pm), the most astonishing reel of rubbish about a cat burglar hired to steal from the Vatican an alchemical formula for turning lead into gold.

As Variety said: 'Ever wondered what a Three Stooges short would look like with a US$40 million budget? Then meet Hudson Hawk, a relentlessly annoying clay duck that crash-lands in a sea of wretched excess and silliness.'    Waterloo (World, 11.55pm), with Rod Steiger, has its classic moments, the long battle scene is exciting, but Tarzan The Ape Man (Pearl, 12.15pm) is a classic.

There has never been and never will be a man who look and acts so well in a loin cloth as Johnny Weissmuller nor a woman who is carried off through the jungle so beautifully as Maureen O'Sullivan.

   Most of the heroes on TV today are fictitious, but BBC Special: For Valour (World, 11am) is a three-part documentary about real men and a woman who have been decorated for extraordinary acts of bravery.

Through an imaginative mix of interviews and reconstructions, BBC war correspondent Martin Bell presents stories about spy Pearl Witherington, bomb disposal officer John Phillips and sea-plane pilot John Cruickshank.



How Stephen Chow and Donnie Yen reinvented Bruce Lee’s classic Chen Zhen in their own ways

How 1990s Hong Kong sex symbol Veronica Yip turned soft-core infamy into mainstream fame

The chaotic life of Anthony Wong, the 3-time Hong Kong best actor ‘shut out’ by China

How Hong Kong star Adam Cheng went from TV heartthrob to stock market jinx

ATV - Asia Television Limited

Yan can clear off