After a week of top class movies filling the schedules, we return to the same old dross tonight. It feels almost as if both terrestrial channels are so exhausted by the effort of putting on award-winning entertainment for 10 days that they have nipped down to the archives and picked something at random. The nearest we get to a big star really enjoying being in front of the camera is Julia Roberts In The Wild (World, 8.30pm), travelling to Malaysia to meet what she claims is her favourite beastie, the orang-utan. Maybe it is, and maybe the television company just told her she would look even better in comparison to those remarkable but peculiar-looking apes. Tonight TVB begins plugging what the programmers presumably hope will be the first of many successful transfers, over to Pearl, of series made for the Jade channel. Behind The Scenes: Journey To The West (Pearl, 8pm) explains some of the tricks and special effects used in this mammoth production, which stretches over 30 episodes and begins next Friday. For Chinese viewers, the story needs little introduction. Chinese children have been learning about the adventures of the Monkey King, his friends, Pig and Friar Sand, as they help the Buddhist teacher Sanzang travel to India to collect scriptures. Monkey is as devious, cocky, cunning, mischievous and ever-triumphant as any hero ever written, and manages to overcome all nine trials and 81 disasters destined for him. He rides a cloud, he leaps mountains, he battles with all kinds of monsters and demons, and he gets buried in a mountain for 300 years. TVB spent huge amounts of money to recreate these adventures, and the result, while falling far short of the Hollywood slickness of The Odyssey, for example, promises to be extremely entertaining for anyone, including expatriates with a taste for Chinese culture. I only hope there are enough of them out there to justify the risk TVB has taken in committing more than half a year's scheduling to screening such a show. There are probably rather more - unfortunately in my, minority, opinion - who are fuming at ATV's decision to screen Macau Racing instead of the boring old Rugby Sevens tomorrow. We have live coverage of the most over-hyped excuse for a knees-up in local sports this afternoon between 2.30pm and 7pm. But tomorrow is the really exciting bit, apparently, when someone wins a plate, or a bowl, or something. Which is why it is so infuriating those who feel ATV snapped up broadcasting rights to the event only to waste them. I am no fan of Macau Racing, as regular readers of this column will know, but, personally, given the choice between beefy blokes hurling themselves around, and some nice horses running up and down, I'll go, any time, for watching the video of Thelma And Louise I taped last week.
