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Sydney Morning Herald

Monday January 12, 2009

Brad Newsome

Mysteries Of The Shark Coast

Discovery, 7.30pm

An interesting, if over-long, two-hour documentary about a scientific expedition to study sharks off the Queensland coast. While shark numbers are in rapid decline on the Great Barrier Reef, they still thrive on the more isolated Osprey Reef and around Raine Island. The expedition heads to these locations, capturing and tagging reef and tiger sharks and learning much about them from data beamed back to satellites. As a bonus, there's also marvellous footage of manta rays being cleaned by nibbly little fish.

999 Frontline

CI, 4.30pm

Kind of like COPS on ketamine, this series follows the day-to-day deployment of emergency services around Britain. There's nothing in this episode to get the pulse racing: armed police respond to the sighting of someone carrying a gun and a helicopter scrambles to a bloke who came off his motorbike. The police armed-response unit has some interesting non-lethal weapons but doesn't explain how they work.

Little Britain USA

Showcase, 7.30pm

Matt Lucas and David Walliams have taken their cast of catchphrase-comedy characters to the US for what is effectively the fourth season of the original show. Juvenile delinquent Vicky Pollard has been sent to a brat camp in Utah, receptionist Carol ("Computer says no") has landed a job at a hospital and adult breast-feeder Harvey is determined to get his "bitty" while visiting the American relations. Fans should love it but those less enamoured might feel like they've seen it all before.

Biography: John Wayne Gacy

CI, 8.30pm

Serial killer docos are always creepiest when they show actual interviews with the killers. This one features a chilling sequence from a 1992 interview with John Wayne Gacy in which he talks matter-of-factly about some of his crimes and even indignantly about press coverage of them. The doco does a good job of telling the Gacy story, from his cruel upbringing by an abusive father to how he killed at least 33 people while posing as a pillar of the community. Among those who share their limited insights into the man is the forensic psychiatrist who dissected Gacy's brain after his execution.

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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