TV review: Kate Adie Returns to Tiananmen | I'm Running Sainsbury's Tuesday | Big Brother Launch Show Thursday | Big Brother: A Decade in the Headlines

Published on Friday 29 May 2009 13:58

Kate Adie Returns to Tiananmen Wednesday, BBC2, 9pm I'm Running Sainsbury's Tuesday, Channel 4, 9pm Big Brother Launch Show Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm Big Brother: A Decade in the Headlines Sunday, Channel 4, 10:10pm

SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON 3 June, 1989, China's so-called people's army opened fire upon the unarmed protestors who had for weeks been massed in Beijing's vast Tiananmen Square. This brutal massacre, during which thousands are thought to have been killed, is one of the most shameful government-ordered atrocities of the 20th century, and yet today in Tiananmen Square there is no memorial or even a hint of remembrance for those who died. Not only has the incident been airbrushed from Chinese history books, but information about it is also blocked by their internet servers. As hammered home in Kate Adie Returns to Tiananmen, the progressive self-image that China has portrayed in recent years is really just a mask, behind which its government remains as dictatorial as ever.

The esteemed BBC news correspondent famously reported from Beijing during the protests and massacre at Tiananmen, and in this clear-eyed tribute she talks to those involved and affected by the incident, and shares some of her own personal memories. The fact that she is forced to, in effect, report undercover, makes a mockery of China's supposed spirit of openness towards the West. Posing as tourists, Adie and her crew are constantly tailed by comically conspicuous secret police cars. The sense that the events of June 1989 aren't something that the Chinese government wishes to discuss or even acknowledge is strengthened by encounters with exiled protesters, a man who was sent to prison simply for penning a protest poem, and Adie's failure to gain an audience with the former government minister who has been under house arrest ever since he spoke out against military intervention at Tiananmen.

This compelling film is alive with vivid recollections and horrific details. Adie talks of how she wept in her hotel room following the massacre, during which she waded through pools of blood in a nearby hospital while trying to help an injured woman into the operating theatre. Another man – who has never received compensation for losing a leg during the attack – chillingly recalls the sight of people being flattened by armoured tanks. Naturally, there is also a sequence on the iconic, unknown "tank man" who boldly barred the path of a convoy of tanks, and who, as has long been assumed, was probably assassinated along with so many of those who openly opposed China's oppressive regime. As an attempt to contextualise and commemorate this tragedy, Adie's insightful essay couldn't really be improved.

It seems as though virtually every TV documentary these days begins with the narrator saying "in these precarious times…", and sure enough the unimaginatively titled I'm Running Sainsbury's is yet another programme eking mileage out of credit-crunch Britain.

It turns out that Sainsbury's have been running an in-house scheme – which tthey should have called "Help, We Don't Know What to Do" – offering ordinary shopfloor workers the opportunity to pitch ideas to the company's senior executives. The hope is that these theoretically inexpensive brainwaves will lure cash-strapped customers away from Sainsbury's rivals, while making them look like a progressive, caring company that actually listens to its drones.

It's difficult to feel a great deal of sympathy for an enormously successful institution such as Sainsbury's, but the concept behind this show ensures that we're rooting instead for the little guy – in this case Becky, a 21-year-old store trader from Watford. Her simple yet sensible idea to revamp Sainsbury's "Feed Your Family for a Fiver" initiative is embraced by top brass and fast-tracked into action.

Unfortunately, despite Becky seeming like a nice, slightly vulnerable young woman deserving of a lucky break, essentially what we have here is an inconsequential documentary about Sainsbury's re-launching one of its meal deals; the strained attempts to manufacture drama and tension are laughable. Unless I'm very much mistaken, however, it is the only programme ever made in which a pivotal moment rests upon the success of a sausage casserole cobbler.

Finally, for anyone who still cares, the tenth series of Big Brother begins this week. It's preceded by Big Brother: A Decade in the Headlines, a documentary in which journalist Grace Dent takes a look back at a phenomenon which – there's no denying it – has helped define British culture in the last ten years.