MIDNIGHT OIL: THE HARDEST LINE
8.30pm, Tuesday, ABC
It's hard not to feel a little bit of sympathy for director Paul Clarke.
He spent seven years putting together this brilliant documentary on Midnight Oil, which coincided with the band's return to the stage after an age.
Then by the time Clarke got it all finished, the band had called it quits again. Well, kind of at least - they won't be touring any more - fair enough, they're getting on in age - but may end up recording again at some stage.
It would have been a lot better for Clarke had he managed to get The Hardest Line out while the band was still a full-time going concern.
There is the sneaking suspicion that the band themselves may have, in some small way, been responsible for that delay. The band is known for having strong opinions and sticking by them; which would often result in very long meetings where absolutely everything gets hashed out.
And it's hard to imagine the band being involved in the project without having some level of input.
But that timing doesn't detract from what is a really impressive documentary that manages to compress the band's 40-odd year career into 100 minutes. Though, as an ardent fan of the Red Sails in the Sunset album. I'll show a bit of self-interest and say I wish that period got more attention.
But you can't have everything.
While the band have had a few different bassplayers over the years, the remaining four members have been together since the 1970s.
That's an impressive feat for any band; spending ages in cramped tour buses, seeing the same faces over and over can often be too much for any group of people.
Yet these four guys, all with their own strong opinions somehow managed to value each others' thoughts and contributions rather than letting them get under their skin.
Sure, there were frictions in the band - there was talk they split into two camps, the "politicians" and the "musicians".
But they managed to never let that friction get in the way of the bigger picture.
The Hardest Line captures the band from the time just before Peter Garrett joined, through the struggles before the high point of the 10-1 album, and then the higher point of the Beds Are Burning fame.
Some time after that came the fall of sorts, where the band was still releasing albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s but only the hardcore fans seemed to be listening.
So they broke up, and then came back years later with The Great Circle tour to show everyone they still had what it takes. A few years after that came the Resist album and the band pressing pause on things.
And The Hardest Line captures all that.
TELEVISION EVENT
10.10pm, Thursday, SBS Viceland
In November 1983, the apocalyptic film The Day After aired on US TV and freaked people out.
It came at a time when the world was fearful tensions between the US and Russia could escalate into nuclear war.
Rather than focus on the military side of things, the film showed us a farm town in the United States dealing with the immediate reality of a missile strike.
That caused it to resonate with viewers, because they were seeing the effects on ordinary people like themselves.
This documentary, made by US born but Australian-based Jeff Daniels, tells the story of how the film came to be.
And it almost didn't come to be. Understandably, the US networks weren't super keen on broadcasting such a frighteningly realistic movie - largely because they figured no advertisers would buy space when it aired.
