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SCMP Reporter

I feel like I am in Groundhog Day. Every day I come to work, sit down at the computer, take the bag out of my chamomile tea and bring up the files for the next day's television.

 And, almost everyday, I have to check the schedules because what I see on the computer screen seems so familiar.

 Hong Kong's terrestrial stations seem to run the same cycle of programmes every six months.

 So you have to admire ATV's temerity to plug Back To The Future (World, 9.30pm) as if we hadn't seen it before.

 Not only have we seen it about 20 times, we have seen its many sequels, too.

 Have the people at ATV not heard the phrase 'familiarity breeds contempt'?  However original, funny or whacky the film was 12 years ago, it no longer is.

 Michael J Fox, whose schoolboyish cheek was charming in the 1980s, is nauseating in the 90s.

 Christopher Lloyd's hair-brained scientist is simply silly once you get to know him, as audiences have done after more than a decade's viewing.

 And as for the plot; well, how many times have people been transported back in time with the chance to change the future.

 Maybe it is ATV and not me that is living time over and over?  Indeed, it wasn't so many months since Alive (Pearl, 9.30pm) was screened but it's certainly not as familiar as World's option. What's more, this true story never fails to intrigue and fascinate, prompting the scenario: 'Would you do it?'  The film is a dramatisation of the events that took place in the frozen Andes after a plane crashed carrying a rugby team from Uruguay to Chile; the only way for the survivors to stay alive during their 72-day ordeal was to eat their dead friends.

 Good performances are aided by stunning scenery.

 The best film today is Judgement At Nuremberg (World, 2.40am), though its subject and delivery is unrelentingly bleak, dealing as it does with the trials of Nazi war criminals.

 The cast is one of the most distinguished imaginable: Spencer Tracy as the Allied judge, Richard Widmark as prosecuting attorney, Maximilian Schell acting as defence, Marlene Dietrich as a widow and Burt Lancaster as a German judge. Judy Garland, William Shatner and Montgomery Clift are equally intelligent.

 This is one of those rare occasions when stars blend together to create a film worthy of their talent.

If it wasn't that The Assassin had been on this week, I would say TVB Pearl had come up with something new.

 La Femme Nikita (Pearl, 8.30pm) is a series based on the same film that The Assassin was based on, Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita.

 Here, Peta Wilson plays Nikita, who, wrongly accused of murder, is forced to work for a top-secret government organisation, which stages a fake suicide to cover her disappearance.

If ATV had informed me of the contents of Deng Xiaoping (World, 8.30pm), I would have informed you. But, despite repeated requests, by 6pm yesterday I had to give up hope of receiving information.

My apologies to RTHK to suggest it had stopped airing BBC radio's The Archers because it was 'politically incorrect'.

 Martin Clarke, head of Radio 3, explains that the show was taken off RTHK some years ago because it was considered 'inappropriate for a multi-cultural audience'.

 What it has done in recent weeks is reject the opportunity to air the show that can no longer be heard on the now-defunct BFBS for the same reasons it took it off the air many years ago.



Repetitive stress