Fat and feminist issues

TELEVISION

THEY'VE exported blue jeans, Coca-Cola, psychobabble, Christian fundamentalism, atom bombs and world peace, but the best thing to come out of America remains Roseanne. Never mind her foolish involvement with Tom Arnold, her acquaintance with the inside of a few loony bins, her ghastly appearances on Oprah complaining of being dysfunctional, or even the current deficiency of her sitcom (this week's Fifties satire came 40 years too late). Spurn her for being fat, abrasive and permanently unwilling to shut up if you must. But I found Dispatches' claim that it's unwise to sit next to an electrical appliance (C4) much more troubling than Roseanne's idea that men are only good for "starting barbecues and walking around in packs peeing on things". Which would you rather believe? I'd endure an extra dose of radon to watch Roseanne on TV any day.

Ruby Wax Meets Roseanne (BBC1) - really a duel of sassiness between two women - got off to a shaky start, with Ruby impatiently pounding on the gate of Fortress Roseanne (a mansion somewhere in the Hollywood vicinity, but strangely devoid of sunshine) and making some cutting remarks about the preponderance of chandeliers. Roseanne was rightly wary of the invasion, though her main concern seemed to be that the film crew might film a) up her dress as she descended the stairs, b) her back view as she ascended the stairs, and c) her discarded underwear. She was clearly underestimating Ruby's more devious methods of assassination. But her paranoia may explain why she recently married her bodyguard. He, a sweet, dutiful fellow, likes to hunt deer but is otherwise harmless.

The house is straight out of a fairy tale - but not in a good way. One frightening room is full of dolls. The walls display the occasional Old Master (fake) in which Roseanne herself often features prominently. The fridge looks like the doors to a ballroom, but turned out to contain nothing but a few old salads. And somewhere unseen lurked a baby, watched 24 hours a day by nurses under strict orders not to doze off (Roseanne has installed cameras in the baby's room so that she can stare at the nurses staring at her offspring). But one can forgive Roseanne everything because, unlike her decor, she is not a fake.

The hostilities seemed to be over when Ruby started scraping lipstick (or something) off Roseanne's front teeth. It was a sign of surrender. From then on Ruby complained more about her own film crew than the furnishings. Later, comfortably ensconced together in Roseanne's bathtub (fully clothed, Ruby in a bridal veil), they discussed dubious husbands, enemies in the form of "Uncle Women" (females indifferent to sisterly solidarity), and the legal boundaries of the interviewer/interviewee relationship: "If you lactate in my face, I'm going to sue you," Ruby warned. A happy scene.

Am I alone in finding the Peugeot advertisement the most moving bit of drama on TV these days? Based on enigmatic imagery, a stirring song, and whatever connections the viewer cares to make between the two, it feels like what one might remember of a decent film, about a week after you first saw it. Usually I have nothing good to say about advertising, except that it gave Salman Rushdie a start, but to its credit this ad says much less about cars than it does about life: there's blood, birth, death and passion. The curious declaration that the average person has 12,367 thoughts per day is followed by its own contradiction (in that "there is no average person", so no one is having those 12,367 thoughts after all). But what we see is the stream of consciousness of a man driving (presumably) a Peugeot - such an eventful stream that it's a wonder he can find his car keys, much less "the hero inside himself". I was bowled over by it. Or have I just succumbed to the power of glitz (sure is better than airbags and catalytic converters)?

Meanwhile, the BBC, terrified of losing viewers to more commercial channels, has been busily investing in crap drama. You can tell it's crap. It's not a question of banal dialogue, excessive action sequences or a poor cast. It's simply that the thing makes no sense. Into the Fire (BBC1) was ridiculous. Perhaps the script had something going for it in an early draft, but I would guess that, after many reworkings and furtive glances in the direction of ITV, any original purpose was lost in the popularising goo of improbability. Frank, a man of impeccable integrity and no other desire but to serve his dreary community, tirelessly kind, unflinchingly loyal, abruptly decides that the money troubles at his leather-bag factory would be best solved by hiring an arsonist to burn the place down so that he can collect the insurance. A semi-criminal young man, whom Frank has temporarily employed out of the goodness of his heart, dies in the fire. Having difficulty coming to terms with this, Frank begins an affair with the boy's mother. Meanwhile, the loss adjuster for the insurance company, maddened by his suspicions about Frank, finally flips his lid and sets fire to Frank's replacement factory ... Er, perhaps Joan Collins should be called in to write the next draft. She couldn't make it any worse.

Alien Empire (BBC1) longs to please, and succeeds more or less. The photography is great, with dung beetles rolling about perfectly round balls of dung like the beginnings of a snowman, a butterfly shedding microscopic wing- scales as it flies, a caterpillar ridding itself of one outrageous costume only to reveal another in the same style underneath. Computer graphics allowed us imaginary access through a spiracle valve to an insect's interior organs (news to me that insects don't have lungs), and gave us a fly's-eye view of the Natural History Museum. But, unlike most wildlife programmes these days, the commentary seems aimed at a very young age group, attuned to pictures not words. And whenever a butterfly appeared, we had to have music. The weirdness of insects was emphasised rather than their intelligibility, and they were repeatedly equated with machines. What surprised me is how like us they are - sociable creatures prone to gathering in large groups; possessors of symmetrical bodies; their eyes, brain and mouth at one end, reproductive and excretory organs at the other ... The difference is, they own the earth.

Next time you can't pay your cab fare, why not cook the driver something in your wok? That's what Ken Hom would do (Ken Hom's Hot Wok, BBC2). It's quick and it's easy (especially if someone else has done an hour's chopping beforehand). Ken's not shy. "I love my cooking," he says, happily hammering some lemongrass while all around him worry about how much his wok is smoking. What I hate about TV chefs is how they always leave behind half the diced onions. Somebody wept for those onions.