ABC1's blog

10:00pm – Tuesday, June 2 on ABC1

First Tuesday Book Club is ABC TV’s nationally televised book club. Hosted by Jennifer Byrne it brings to the screen the pleasures that draw millions of clubbers worldwide with their shared love of reading.

Debating the merits of this month’s two books are regulars Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger plus special guest authors Richard Flanagan and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The two books featured on this month’s program are The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ransom by David Malouf.

First Tuesday Book Club With Jennifer Byrne will be repeated on ABC2 – Sunday, June 07 at 7:00pm

9:35pm – Tuesday, June 2 on ABC1

The fourth episode of Sanjeev Bhaskar’s new comedy, set in an Indian call centre.

Realising that the phone operators are lacking in confidence and are too submissive with the callers, Terri sets out to give them a crash course in self- confidence.

At the same time Amar, Dev’s assistant, is seriously distracted because his parents are forcing him into an arranged marriage.

Inevitably, Amar is chosen as the subject at Terri’s ‘Assertiveness Workshop’, and she succeeds in giving him a ‘corporate bitch slapping’. He runs off a broken man.

Terri, Kenny, and Dev follow Amar to the train station where they each make their case for and against the arranged marriage.

They go with him to Amar’s house where Amar, filled with confidence, takes a stand. Amar is surprised at the parents’ supportive reaction – and a bit shocked when he sees the prospective bride….

8:30pm – Tuesday, June 2 on ABC1

This spectacular series continues with Monty Don heading off to one of the most plant-rich zones in the world: South Africa. He’s on the eighth leg of his incredible global journey. Visiting 80 of the world’s most celebrated and stunning gardens, from ancient to modern, large to small, and grand to humble.

Whilst there he takes a journey to the Drakensberg Mountains to see some botanical treasures in their natural environment, views the strange King Proteus, South Africa’s national plant and traces the garden-story of the Dutch colonists who settled in South Africa in the nineteenth century.

Highlights in this episode include: the Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens in Cape Town, some native treasures in the Drakensberg Mountains, plus a school vegetable garden in a Johannesburg township.

9:35pm – Monday, June 1 on ABC1

The team race against time to find and deactivate a bomb planted in central London by an ex-IRA operative with a personal grudge against Section D.

Meanwhile, the USA is close to commencing military action against Iran and Adam Carter (Rupert Penry- Jones) feels the only option to prevent war is for the truth to come out about the Tehran train bomb.

He tips off journalist Ban Kaplan (Alex Lanipekun), but the Home Secretary (Robert Glenister) and Iranian Special Consul Dariush Bakhshi (Simon Abkarian), realise that if the truth gets out then their plan to reach a diplomatic, if underhand, solution is doomed.

Section D is suspended while the Home Office investigates Ros’s (Hermione Norris) betrayal but as the team leaves the Grid, Connie James (Gemma Jones) is approached by former IRA operative Davie King, who still bears a major grudge against Section D head, Harry Pearce (Peter Firth).

King tells Connie that all of Section D must assemble at the location of a bomb he intends to detonate in London. If they refuse, he will make sure that hundreds of civilians are killed, and he knows they would sacrifice themselves rather than risk that.

Harry knows that King must have been commissioned to target Section D – his personal grudge is being exploited for someone else’s ends, someone who needs Section D out of the picture…

Join the adventure and extend your television experience with the sleek, interactive online game at http://abc.net.au/spooks

Monday 1 June 2009 at 8.30pm on ABC1

“And the nurse came around. And I said you know my mum’s not well, we need to get a doctor, and her comment to me was, isn’t she always like that? And I said no, she’s not near dying.” Son of aged care resident

It’s a difficult decision for any family to make: what to do when Mum or Dad can’t look after themselves and they need around-the-clock care. Most families make that decision accepting assurances from the government that Australia’s system is the best money can buy.

Right now across Australia there are 170,000 people in aged care nursing homes. By 2030 that number will be closer to half a million. Those institutions are heavily subsidised by the Federal Government and their performance is scrutinised by the Federal Department of Health and Ageing and the Commissioner for Aged Care.

“I certainly have seen nursing homes right around this country in every state and territory, and I have seen many first class nursing homes.” Justine Elliot, Minister for Ageing

But for many families the performance of nursing homes falls a long way short of the ideal.

Take 87 year old Eddy, confined to a nursing home with limited mobility. Last October he fell and fractured his hip. An eye-witness to the event tells Four Corners that Eddy was yelled at by staff before they bundled him into a chair, unaware he had a serious injury.

Over time, the elderly man developed serious leg ulcers and ultimately died. No one is quite sure how his treatment in the home affected him. When his family asked for his medical records they were told they must make a Freedom of Information request. A complaint alleging abuse by the staff against Eddy was investigated, but a key witness was not interviewed. The family is left bewildered.

Reporter Wendy Carlisle talks to another family who placed their 86 year old mother, Thelma, in care. They tell how staff washed her with a dish cloth, ignored filthy bedding and ultimately failed to realise she had pneumonia.

“I think everything was done cheaply, like there wasn’t enough linen. One time she was sick on a Sunday, and they had washed up, well, there was no towels to dry her, they did it with chux cloths, and another time there was all faeces on her sheets.” Thelma’s daughter

Thelma’s doctor tells Four Corners he was not called to attend her and 19 days after she first moved into the nursing home, Thelma died in a public hospital.

Significantly, an investigation by the Department’s Complaints Investigation Scheme into her case shows the nursing home did ignore Thelma’s condition. Alone, this would be of real concern. However the investigators failed to speak to her doctor to understand the full extent of the nursing home’s problems. Four Corners has discovered these kinds of oversights by investigators are not uncommon, as a former panel member of the Aged Care Complaints Resolution Scheme says:

“I would describe it as a very flawed system.”

Four Corners reports that the Aged Care Commissioner found serious deficiencies in the way the department investigates cases. Of the 139 cases the Commissioner reviewed, she found that half of them were seriously flawed.

The inability to investigate complaints properly isn’t the only problem though. Last year there were 7,500 complaints to the Department of Health. In the vast majority of cases, no matter how serious the complaint was, there is no public record made of the complaint, even if it’s proved correct.

Nursing homes can avoid being named and shamed by simply agreeing to improve their standard of care. In order to be named the home must be sanctioned by the Department. In 2008 that happened just 14 times. That means, for the general public, there is no comprehensive way to check the number of complaints made against an individual nursing home.

There is little doubt that with an ageing population, the care system is under enormous strain. It’s also true it can only be kept up to the mark by a powerful system of regulation. Right now, if you believe the experts and the families who’ve used it, there are serious flaws.

“End of the Line” is a program that no child of an ageing parent should miss. It goes to air on Monday 1 June, at 8.30 pm on ABC1. The program is replayed on 2 June at 11.35pm.

6:30pm – Monday, June 1 on ABC1

This week on Talking Heads Peter Thompson’s guest is an artist who kicked off his career by designing and hand-painting boxer shorts. Mitch Dowd was struggling to find the money to fund an exhibition of his art when he came up with this inventive idea. But such was the demand for his undies and sleepwear that he ended up running a very successful business.

So why has Mitch Dowd now sold up, moved to a solar-powered, mud-brick house in the country and changed his name.

Talking Heads: Mitch Dowd will be repeated on ABC2 – Tuesday, June 02 at 5:00pm

5:00pm – Monday, June 1 on ABC1

Welcome to St Hopes – an ordinary-looking school which houses a big secret.

Hidden in its depths is the headquarters of M.I. High – MI9′s division of highly trained teen spies whose mission is to protect Britain from the evil Super Kriminal Underground League (S.K.U.L.).

Super scientist Rose (Rachel Petadwala), enigmatic and athletic Blane (Moustafa Chousein-Oglou) and social chameleon Daisy (Bel Powley) together use all their training and guile to keep the evil Grandmaster and his S.K.U.L. cohorts at bay, without their classmates finding out what they are up to.

Series one of M.I. High saw the heroic trio battling S.K.U.L.’s computer hackers, freak power surges and even a cybernetic clone of the Prime Minister. In series two the Grand Master is more power-crazed than ever, and the M.I. High agents must save the country from a strange sleeping sickness which sweeps the nation, a new cold war, and investigate a mysterious wave of crime committed by well-behaved children.

Episode 1 – It’s A Kind Of Magic – Monday, June 01 at 5:00pm on ABC1 Daisy, Blane and Rose return to St Hopes for a new term. After catching Britain’s most deadly threat, the Grand Master, they are the toast of the secret services. But, while accepting an award at MI9, they witness the mysterious disappearance of the new American President during a magician’s act.

Episode 2 – You Can Call Me Al – Tuesday, June 02 at 5:00pm on ABC1 MI9′s Head of Technology, Quentin Flake (Paul Reynolds), is at St Hopes to test new crime- busting computer Allen, which uses normal electrical devices to keep order. But when a vacuum locks up 50 people for littering, the team realises that Allen is a tyrant intent on taking over the school.

8:35pm – Sunday, May 31 on ABC1

Julie Walters stars as Mary Whitehouse, the UK’s renowned taste and decency campaigner who came to prominence in the 1960s when she famously forced the resignation of the BBC’s Director-General after a row over the Beatles’ use of the world ‘knickers’ on air.

It’s 1963 – a time of short skirts and flower power, feminism and gay rights. It was a revolutionary time.

But as the swinging Sixties swept Britain, one horrified woman became the voice of those who had no desire to join the permissive age. Enter the world of Mary Whitehouse.

In the prosperous town of Claverley, near Wolverhampton, middle England, 53-year-old housewife and art teacher Mary Whitehouse lives in a well-ordered world where people are polite, go to church on Sundays, play cricket on the village green, and sing hymns instead of pop songs. But times are changing and Mary starts to see cracks appear in the Britain she loves. Sex, lies, smut and swearing seem to have become the subject of newspaper columns and TV programs everywhere and Mary is determined to do something about it.

Mary’s campaign starts with television, and more specifically the BBC and its Director-General, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene (Hugh Bonneville) – a man who regarded her at first with derision, then with suspicion, and finally, as a force to be reckoned with.

Supported by her husband, Ernest (Alun Armstrong), her great friend Norah (Georgie Glen), and the rest of the Clean Up TV Campaign, Mary sets out to rid the BBC of the ‘tide of filth’ that has infiltrated its programming – programming that does nothing but encourage loose behaviour like smoking, drinking and open-mouthed kissing.

This true story follows the efforts and surprising victories of a remarkable character in a time of huge social upheaval; a self-styled bastion of British morals who took on the upper-class male establishment – and won.

7:30pm – Sunday, May 31 on ABC1

When a London bus takes a detour to an alien world, the Doctor must join forces with the extraordinary Lady Christina. But the mysterious planet holds terrifying secrets, hidden in the sand. And time is running out, as the deadly Swarm gets closer…

Planet Of The Dead features David Tennant as the Doctor, Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina and Lee Evans as Malcolm.

Michelle Ryan is best known for her roles as Zoe Slater in the BBC soap EastEnders and as Jaime Sommers in the recent remake of Bionic Woman.

One of Britain’s best-loved and biggest comedy stars, Lee Evans, joins the cast as Malcolm. A successful stand-up comedian, Lee has also appeared in numerous movies, most notably MouseHunt, There’s Something About Mary and The Fifth Element.

1:30pm – Sunday, May 31 on ABC1

Message Stick presents a new series of studio chat programs called Talking Stick. In this series, presenter Miriam Corowa speaks to Indigenous and non- Indigenous insiders to discuss six topics of interest to all Australians.

From the vexed subjects of Aboriginal health, education and justice, to national and international success in sport and music and the impact of climate change on communities across the country, Talking Stick provides a candid assessment of the state of the Indigenous nation.

In episode three, Sport, Miriam and her guests discuss Indigenous Australia’s sports stars.

Sporting accomplishments in Australia and overseas have helped put Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders on the map. Cathy Freeman’s extraordinary Gold Medal in Sydney, Evonne Goolagong-Cawley’s Wimbledon win and a legion of football stars, from all codes, who shine every week are just a few examples.

Three remarkable Australians who have each achieved at the highest level in their respective sports join Miriam to talk about how they are inspiring many more to follow in their footsteps.

Marcia Ella-Duncan is a former Australian netballer who received the Order of Australia in 1988 and is a member of the remarkable Ella clan; Danny Morseu is a two-time Australian basketball Olympian; and Bo De la Cruz is one of the world’s best touch footballers.

How does this sporting success impact on attitudes towards Indigenous Australians? And what does it mean for young Indigenous Australians to have sporting role models.

Message Stick: Talking Stick: Sport will be repeated on ABC2 – Monday, June 01 at 5:00pm