CINEMA A Time to Kill (15; nationwide from Fri). John Grisham's first novel becomes the latest in a series of blockbusters based on his work. When Samuel L Jackson takes revenge on the racists who attacked his daughter, he ends up in court in between lawyers Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey and Matthew McConaughey. Emma (U; nationwide from Fri). Though I wouldn't want to be frivolous about it, the information it provided included a definition of samsara: it means the cycle of death and rebirth. And I thought it was a perfume.The quest for enlightenment continued in The Mic, the Star and the Crescent: Rappin' for Islam (Rl), Phil Pegum's documentary about the connection between hip hop music and black Muslims.
Most encouragingly, he had to work at becoming all- loving, compassionate, wise and understanding, but he got there. Theoretically, we could all become Buddhas.This was the first of what promises to be a fascinating series, well- researched and logically presented. There was some interesting history to be dug out of all this, but it was only glimpsed. "Oh brethren, ain't ye happy?" sang the Boston Camerata, slickly.
Well, possibly.The World Service has been examining world religions and has reached The Way of the Buddha. The name Buddha means "the fully enlightened one", and the current holder of the title, Gautama, lived about 2,500 years ago. He started out as a wealthy prince, then renounced splendour and nearly starved until he realised that the secret of happiness is the middle way. This Buddha was not divine, but an exemplar of moral perfection. There are extant, drawled Grossman, over 1,000 sawngs, "pleasing to the ear and high on piety".
They believe carnal relations are the cause of the world's problems, so we are not to be surprised that there are only eight of them left. "Brave Souls" was Drever's lament for the men: its plangent harmonica echoing the screaming gulls was enough to make you weep.Drever was precisely the right person to make such a programme, which was more than you could say for the one that preceded it - I wonder whose bright idea it was to ask Loyd Grossman to narrate Simple Gifts (R2) It didn't work. The viscous urban sprawl of his delivery engulfed the primitive, Calvinist fundamentalism of the Shakers in an uncomfortable, semi- cynical, quasi-scholarly slick.Their music is simple, mildly affecting stuff - often derived from birdsong, if you are to believe the legends. All eight men were drowned, a frightful tragedy for such a tiny community. He remembered that there had been three weeks of gales, and the sea was terrific: "the boat was just completely overwhelemed", he said, giving the word four syllables and its full, terrible meaning. He was born there and still derives the inspiration for much of the music for his band Wolfstone from the savage, beautiful landscape of those Isles Ne'er Forgotten (R2).
Revisiting the place, he took us to Longhope, to meet the poor chap who bore the responsibility for sending out the lifeboat on a wild night in March 1969. She zips up the tent, switches off her recorder and, one imagines, hopes she'll make it home.Home for Ivan Drever is Orkney. Their fat little bellies are full of blood, which they generously regurgitate for less successful friends. Joanna, he observed solicitously, was looking very pale.The really nice thing about Joanna Pinnock is that she reacts just as we would - or as I would, anyway. She probably knows more than most of us about Nature Study, but when a relation of the jaguar called, apparently, a "margot" (or could it be, fond hope, a Margaux?), with extended balletic legs, comes prowling for prey, she knows she's beat. In Latin, they sounded like Desmondus rotundus (round Desmond? Anything to do with the naked ape Mr Morris?). The next blood-curdling sound proved to be a cow, protestingly providing provender for a vampire bat.
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