Chang sweetens a sour plot
THE movie version of Timothy Mo's novel Soursweet (World, 9.30pm), about a family of emigrants from Hong Kong struggling to survive in London, was a success internationally, but is disappointingly stereotypical for anyone who's lived here for any length oftime.
Sylvia Chang (wonderful) plays Lily and Danny Dun An-ning (awful) is Chen, the man she marries in Hong Kong before departing for a new life in London. He works as a waiter, but is forced to flee when Soho triads try to recruit him as a drug-runner to pay off gambling debts he's run up.
He hides out in the East End, opens a takeaway, which also opens the film's happy scenes, and gives director Mike Newell the cue to run through some stock culture shock cliches for each member of the family.
Meanwhile, back in Chinatown the triads have got the choppers out, not only for Chen, but also for each other, and it looks like the idyll is about to end for Lily and her family.
Disappointing, but certainly worth a look. And Sylvia Chang, as always, gives a convincing and touching performance.
THE BBC documentary series 40 Minutes (5.15pm and 1.15am) makes disturbing viewing with an instalment entitled A Child For Hitler. It's the story of Renate, the product of ''Lebensborn'' Himmler's experiment to breed an aryan master race during the Third Reich.
She was never told that her father was one of the thousands of SS officers who answered the call of the Nazi propaganda machine to help ''make a child for Hitler'' - her mother thought the truth too terrible to tell.
THE world's southern-most Emperor Penguin colony is the setting for Man's Heritage (Pearl 8.30pm), which looks at the breeding cycle of these ''Emperors of the Antarctic''. The penguins lay their eggs in the middle of the harsh winter, then incubate them through savage blizzards until they hatch in spring - when, presumably, it's merely freezing.
There's a human thread interwoven too, as the film crew compare their modern expedition with the one described as ''the worst journey in the world'' in 1911 by Captain Scott's party, who also collected the first Emperor egg for science.
ENOUGH already. Innerspace (Pearl 9.30pm, ORT 120 mins) is hauled out once more for another chance to see washed up navy pilot Dennis Quaid (The Big Easy) being shrunk down with his sub and shot into the body of neurotic nerd Martin Short (Three Fugitives).
It's all part of an experiment that went wrong, but attempts to return both men to normal are hampered by baddies trying to kill Short to recover the miniaturising formula.
Meg Ryan (Sleepless in Seattle) plays the love interest, a role that soon developed into strictly unprofessional levels for she and Quaid, who are now married.
BASED on Frank Deford's novel, the film Everything's All-American (Pearl 12.30am, ORT 127 mins) should be viewed for one reason only, a resoundingly good performance from Jessica Lange.
She plays the homecoming queen who marries the college football hero (Dennis Quaid, again) then finds over the next quarter century that the living happily ever after is not as smooth as the fairytale wedding suggested. Timothy Hutton is the adoring nephew, walking the tightrope between his hero worship of Quaid and his own passion for Lange.
JUST a reminder that the second semi-final of the Diamond Jubilee Cricket tournament is on live. West Indies play Sri Lanka (Prime Sports 5.30pm).
