The Elvis Revolution

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday July 1, 1999

Doug Anderson

America In The Fifties, 7.30pm, SBS: Victory euphoria and a sense of

ascendancy give way to disenchantment as the postwar boomers begin to

suspect that there's more to life than by-the-numbers enticements in Coca-Cola advertisements or the inner glow of Saturday Evening Post covers by Norman

Rockwell. What do you seek when you've got it all? You seek forbidden fruit, rebellion and closed doors. Enter Elvis Presley and Jack Kerouac as the tide moves one way with the machine and individuals, not ready to abandon their instincts, hang out for

something less obvious.

Special Event, 8.30pm, 9:

The term Special Event can mean anything from a royal wedding to the recovery of a strongbox from the Titanic. Or a couple of poofy magicians extracting man-eating tigers from hidden cavities in the Great Wall Of China ... or making Claudia Schiffer

vanish inside an enchanted telephone box. Such events pale into insignificance

beside this musical cavalcade to mark the 50th birthday of the entertainer formerly known as Johnny Farnham. Farnham, who has been wringing every last drop

from his 50th, appears liveish from Melbourne's Regent Theatre with all manner of mates and special guests. It speaks reams for the guy

that he has, by dint of attitude and showmanship, attained a rare place in the national

psyche. One of the Unknockables.

Oprah Winfrey, 2.30pm, 10:

If John Farnham is an

Unknockable, Oprah Winfrey is an Unpalatable. Oozing egregiousness and heavy

duty faux humility, she

introduces actress Kate Capshaw who, in a series of interludes bound to bring a tear to the eye of a granite

vulture, talks about Love.

Tens of thousands of ordinary men and women who would normally never say Boo! to a goose are already wending their way home from their places of employment, after pleading illness, so as not to miss this seminal broadcast.

The Churchills, 9.30pm, ABC: One of Britain's great

dynasties is examined in a three-part series. The first Duke of Marlborough ... the original Marlboro Man ... set the pace for the next 300 years. Set against the

backdrop of Blenheim Palace, the doco takes up where the superb comic strip, drawn by Frank Bellamy in the old Eagle Boys' Weekly, left off. Blue-blooded recklessness, unpleasant sexual diseases, the magnetic beauty of Jennie

Jerome ... And young

Winnie labouring to prove himself worthy to parents who were too busy poncing about high society to give their

sensitive youngster the

time of day. Dickie Attenborough's early bioflick, Young Winston (1972), was a fair to middling start, but this looks to be a far more

penetrating examination of the Churchill clan.