Saturday January 11

The Age

Thursday January 9, 2003

Larissa Dubecki and Paul Kalina

TURN ON, TURN OFF

The Lost Legions of Varus, SBS, 7.30PM

``Fear the forest and stinking bog," said Tacitus, a Roman fond of foreboding epigrams. Wise would have been the 17th, 18th and 19th legions of the imperial army to heed him. In 9AD the legions, consisting of 20,000 men and hangers-on, were slaughtered in two days by a loose coalition of Germanic tribesmen long believed subjugated. It was an action the makers of this documentary believe was a defining point in European history. Led by Varus, a glorified ex-lawyer married to the emperor's great-niece, the Roman forces had controlled modern-day Germany and its Iron Age tribes for 20 years. Unknown to them, a supposedly ``Romanised" German leader, Arminius, organised their overthrow, leading them into the dark Teutoberg forest for a deadly ambush. Using evidence unearthed in the past decade, The Lost Legions of Varus provides detailed re-creations and analysis of why these Romans acted as they did. The argument that without this battle there perhaps would have been no Napoleon or Hitler reeks of historical one-upmanship, but the program is still entertaining.

PAY TV -- PAUL KALINA

Russian Doll, SHOWTIME, 8.30PM

In this highly contrived, tissue-thin romantic comedy, a mail-order bride arrives from Russia to find her intended husband has suffered a terminal heart attack. (Perhaps he knew what the plot had in store.) Meanwhile, low-rent investigator Harvey (Hugo Weaving), broken-hearted after accidentally discovering his lover's infidelity, finds his life entangled with that of the endlessly tittering and skittish Katia (Natalia Novikova), who quickly begins a torrid and secretive affair with Harvey's best friend Ethan (David Wenham, hopelessly miscast as a pious Jew). Moving at a pace that might be euphemistically described as leisurely, the join-the-dots caper enlists the standard repertoire of mix-ups and confusions to build to the inevitable true-love-blossoms climax. Most disappointing, however, is director and co-writer Stavros Katantzidis' reluctance to show us why or how his heroes find love.

Outbreak, MOVIE EXTRA, 8.30PM

Subject-matter that has recently become even more compelling - a fast-acting killer virus has affected a small town in the US and threatens to spread across the nation - is the starting-point to this unsettling disaster film, which starts out well but soon loses its focus. Dustin Hoffman plays an army scientist who breaks rank and becomes a one-man army pitted against his superiors, within whose ranks a conspiracy emerges. Subtlety is a quality notable only for its absence in the work of Wolfgang Peterson (Das Boot, In the Line of Fire), who delivers a gripping, though unsurprising, potboiler filled with skilfully staged, hair-raising stunts and heart-stopping showdowns.

© 2003 The Age

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