Inside Hana's Suitcase
Sunday, CBC, 8 p.m.
Larry Weinstein’s documentary, derived from Karen Levine’s book of the same title, moves sideways towards telling an important Holocaust story, but does it powerfully. A suitcase that belonged to Hana Brady, who died in Auschwitz at the age of 13, ended up in the Tokyo Holocaust Centre a few years ago. The Centre’s director, Fumiko Ishioka, began thorough and prolonged research into the suitcase, its owner and the circumstances surrounding her short life. The idea was to use all of this as an educational tool. The research led to a connection with Hana’s brother, George, who survived the Holocaust and was living in Toronto. In the doc, it is George who tells most of the story of what happened to him and Hana and their parents in a small town in Czechoslovakia. What is most powerful and memorable, though, is the footage of children learning so much from the contents of Hana’s suitcase.
Good Dog
Sunday, HBO Canada, 8 p.m.
After the clever, cheerful opening credits, along comes Ken Finkleman, back as George, the self-absorbed something-in-TV guy. This time, George is pitching a TV show about his fab life with a 30-year-old, rail-thin, blond model-or-something. (Lauren Lee Smith). Right off, George says he going to see Larry David to get Larry’s blessing for the show and head off those critics who will claim he’s ripping off Curb Your Enthusiasm. This is a peculiar tack to take, seeing as several episodes into the series, it’s very Larry-David-ish. Still this is closer to vintage, cringe-inducing Finkleman humour than most of his efforts since The Newsroom. It’s not outright funny, but it does have bite and the sort of loose drollery that keeps you watching, waiting for the next instance of George’s awful shallowness. Be nicer if it had a more vicious bite, but like the dog referenced in the title, it has some humorous heft. The bits of acid humour in Good Dog are tasty enough.
Secret Millionaire
Sunday, ABC, CITY-TV, 8 p.m.
ABC says, “They’re American millionaires. Now they will live in America’s hardest hit communities. But keep their identities secret.” Then they donate to “those they find the most deserving.” Yikes. This is depression-era TV programming. “Giving back never felt so good” is the show’s slogan and the program actually offers a cornucopia of insights. (A version of the show, an international reality-TV franchise, aired on Fox a couple of years ago.) From what is available to preview, at times the series presents the U.S.A. as a Third World Country. While the surface meaning is clear - the rich give money to people who are doing community work and to others they admire - and viewers are meant to be as tearful as the recipients, the underlying meaning is much more murky. Unless you instantly recognize that the show posits an America populated by aristocrats and peasants.
WikiLeaks' Forgotten Man
Sunday, CBC News Network, 10 p.m.
While the legal travails of Julian Assange have dominated the coverage of WikiLeaks, this documentary (made for Australia’s ABC) makes the case that Assange is actually not the most important figure in the WikiLeaks story. It points out that WikiLeaks’s recent profound impact would not have happened without the young American soldier Private Bradley Manning. What Manning allegedly stole is what WikiLeaks unleashed last year. Much of the information we get here comes from Manning’s former hacker-friend Adrian Lamo. In turn, Lamo’s assertions are questioned by others interviewed here. And then there is Manning’s status in the U.S. - fool, traitor or hero? Daniel Ellsberg, vilified and then lauded for releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says “Bradley Manning has shown a willingness to give his life, his freedom, for his country. And you can't be more patriotic than that.”
Check local listings.
