IT is difficult to know which is more of an ordeal; the World Cup or the fact that Pearl is showing all the Police Academy films. There are three weeks to go for one, but the other comes to an end this evening with Police Academy 6: City Under Seige (Pearl, 9.30pm).
This is more of the same, but not as funny. And Police Academy was never really funny to start with. Bubba Smith returns as Hightower, Michael Winslow as Jones, David Graf as Tackleberry and Marion Ramsay as Hooks. Steve Guttenberg wisely decided to pass, having realised by this stage that there are only so many laughs a screenwriter can wring from flatulence.
The plot, for what it is worth, involves a treacherous gang known as the Wilson Heights Gang. They unleash the worst outbreak of crime the city has known. And, horror of horrors, the property market is threatened.
Meanwhile, the eternally uptight and painfully inept Lieutenant Harris (G.W. Bailey) believes there is a spy loose in the precinct. The rest you can guess.
YOU would be better spending your time watching the desert shift, which is what David Hughes did when he lived for a year in Africa's Namib desert, the oldest desert on Earth.
Man's Heritage (Pearl, 8.30pm) tells his story and that of the strange animals who make the desert dunes their home. Many deserts have dunes, but only in the Namib's constantly-shifting sands have animals evolved that can live in them.
MARIEL Hemingway, she of the courtroom drama series Civil Wars, stars in Desperate Rescue: The Cathy Mahone Story (Pearl, 12.15am), which is based on a true story. Cathy Mahone's seven-year-old daughter was abducted by her ex-husband, the girl's father, during a routine weekend visitation.
