TELEVISION must be the social indicator of the late 20th century. This year's 49th Annual Emmy Awards (Monday, Pearl, 9.30 pm) will be watched by about 620 million people. That's a lot of people. That's half the population of China. That's 100 times the population of Hong Kong. That's more people than shopped in Shanghai Tang last Christmas.
This year's extravagant, glitzy slice of back-slapping televisual Americana (presented by Glenn Close, left) will, say the organisers, be an 'entertaining look at physical comedy, science fiction and the resurgence of spiritual programming on television'. Spiritual programming? Is television so important that God's doing the scheduling these days? He certainly isn't doing much in these parts. On Wednesday - a public holiday - we get treated to a morning screening of the The Grapes Of Wrath. The John Ford classic? Of course not. It's the stage play-cum-television drama. Who knows, it may be good or it may be awful. But it definitely ain't the real thing. The original was one of the best movies ever made. And we don't get to see it.
Barton Fink (Friday, Pearl, 2.20 am) is set in the same Hollywood Golden Age that spawned Ford's The Grapes Of Wrath but there the similarities end. It starts as an innocent Tinseltown satire and ends very, very differently. At the beginning we get a tale about a young playwright, John Turturro (left), who is trying to write his first screenplay. He tries to glean inspiration from the 'common people' around him, and as he does so the movie changes. What starts as a gentle movie-industry spoof morphs into a disturbing psychotic trip. What was screwball comedy becomes a bizarre examination of the minds of two bizarrely disturbed people. It's far from the norm, it jangles the nerves, but it works.
His Girl Friday (Saturday, World, 12.10 am) more than works - it's a masterpiece. It's a super-fast, multi-layered, black-humoured farce about a newspaper editor (Cary Grant) who manipulates a murder trial for his own ends. Grant is outstanding, as are Rosalind Russell (who plays his ex-wife and star reporter) and Ralph Bellamy (Russell's new man). The movie is hilarious, but director Howard Hawks doesn't allow the comedy to swamp the film's emotional thread and serious political message. Like the original Grapes Of Wrath, it's a 'must see' movie. Both are superb examples of their art, both carried weighty social messages and both packed movie houses for weeks. It's just a shame we don't see them both in one week.
Although a very different type of film, Easy Rider (Saturday, Pearl, 2 am) is another timeless classic. It became the cult '60s road movie and Hollywood lost a fortune trying to replicate its low-budget success. Why did it work? Because it hit the right spot at exactly the right time. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda play two bikers who sell a pile of cocaine and use the cash, to search for 'the real America'. The rock 'n' roll soundtrack is awesome and the camera work achieves a much sought-after casualness. What's more, Jack Nicholson made his name here as a drunken lawyer who tags along for the ride. It's brilliant.