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The Sunday Age
Sunday March 27, 2011
RAISING HOPE HARRY‚„S LAW WIKILEAKS:WAR, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE STRIPPEDRATING: 4/5RAISING HOPETuesday, 8.30pm, Eleven'Do you think this kind of stuff happens in other people's houses," Burt (Garret Dillahunt) asks very early on in this week's brilliant episode, "and they're just too embarrassed to talk about it?" Let's hope the answer is a resounding no because what he's talking about ‚€¯ hiding from the confused but amorous Maw Maw (Cloris Leachman) who somehow thinks he is her long-dead husband ‚€¯ is just the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg of weird that floats in this week. Along with Maw Maw's misplaced attentions, the main thread here is that Delilah, long-absent cousin of Virginia (Martha Plimpton), has announced she's popping over for a visit. The problem with that is she's a) still very angry that Virginia stole her boyfriend (Burt) before she could get to second base with him and b) under the impression that Maw Maw is dead. And those two facts combined means she's coming to kick the family out of their home and claim her half of the estate. Or maybe not, she says, if Virginia agrees to loan out Burt long enough for him to finish their decades-old date. And so begins a deliciously twisted take on the "what would you do for money" question raised so well by Woody Harrelson and Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal. The key to this episode is, without doubt, guest star Amy Sedaris as cousin Delilah. She was utterly believable (and hilarious) as the messed up fortysomething high-school student in Strangers with Candy and she's back in fine form here. Delilah is, by the bent standards of Raising Hope, the success story of the family. She's travelled all over the world "from Dallas all the way to Fort Worth" in her job as a pharmaceutical company saleswoman, she's had (semi-successful) plastic surgery, she has a stock portfolio worth thousands of dollars. But what she really misses is the love of Burt. Watching her awkward moves as she tries to win him back are some of the funniest moments the comedy has produced. Hopefully it's proof the writers have realised what we knew from the start: this show shouldn't try to be yet another family sitcom with a blue-collar edge; it should stick with what attracted us in the first place: being a very dark joke that makes us feel slightly embarrassed for laughing, but makes us laugh all the same.RATING: 3/5HARRY'S LAWSunday, 9.30pm, Channel NineJust five episodes in and already Kathy Bates is proving herself to be the perfect actor to carry David E. Kelley's latest foray into the legal arena. She's a world away from the usual primped and polished lawyers who stamp around in mini-skirts pulling off incredible legal magic. And that's her charm. This episode highlights yet another wonderful difference when Harry (Bates) risks disbarment rather than represent a client she knows is guilty. "You know my client killed his wife; certainly I know it," she tells an astonished jury when forced to proceed, and is promptly hustled off to jail herself. The case gives great insight into the series' other main player, loud-mouthed litigator Tommy Jefferson (Christopher McDonald). By throwing out the tired standards of the legal drama, Kelley has reinvigorated the genre.RATING: 3/5WIKILEAKS: WAR, LIES AND VIDEOTAPEWednesday, 8.30pm, ABC2Unless you've been living under a rock, you've undoubtedly heard the word "WikiLeaks" and, depending on your leanings, you've probably already decided if the website that releases classified government documents and its founder Julian Assange are endangering the free world or invaluable in the fight to keep governments honest. What just may change your opinion is this documentary tracing the origins of the site, what it and the people behind it set out to do and how it may well be Assange's ego that's at fault here, not his intent. There are interviews with those who were there at the start and reams of documentation about the good WikiLeaks has done, as well as a measured look at why the American politicians were so annoyed when they suddenly found their secrets online. Most telling are the chats with Assange's former partner in online publishing, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and wow, does he have a lot to say. It's a good thing Assange is fighting multiple legal battles for his own freedom; chances are if he wasn't he'd be dragging Domscheit-Berg to court for slander.RATING: 3/5STRIPPED,Friday, 10.05pm, SBS OneFifteen years ago, photographer Greg Friedler placed a small ad in New York's Village Voice newspaper calling for people to become "naked and famous". He took pictures of the ordinary people who responded, in their everyday clothes and then in their birthday suits. The result was the book Naked New York, which he followed up with Naked Los Angeles, then Naked London, each time winning applause for stripping away, literally, the pretensions of class and fashion to show we're all alike. He's now decided to finish with Naked Las Vegas and is taking movie cameras along for the ride. Yes, there's male and female full-frontal nudity galore, but Stripped is much more. By asking people to get nude, Friedler gets to the heart of what constitutes art and shows how that definition varies from person to person. Along the way he explodes the myths of the "typical body". Anyone with body issues should watch this.
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