What I saw on television last night

I don't normally write about what I see on television for two reasons: I'm sure I have nothing original to write, and I don't watch much television anyway (some nights I don't watch at all whereas at other times I watch between an hour and two - it very much depends what is being shown. Apart from three weekly series which I follow, I only watch the news).

Last night on the Channel 2 news was an article about people drawing pictures on the walls of a building which was condemned and destroyed shortly after the drawings were finished. I wasn't following the story very closely because my attention had been drawn to the strange choice of incidental music - "Starless", by King Crimson. The beautiful, post-apocalyptic instrumental opening was there, along with bits of John Wetton singing the first verse. There was also part of Fripp's guitar solo. This is not the first time I've heard KC as incidental music on the news, but it always strikes me as very bizarre.

Following the news was a programme called 'Avudim' - not the American series 'Lost', but rather a new Israeli programme which tries to put people in touch with lost family members, such as unknown fathers and siblings given up for adoption. This is not the sort of thing which I would generally watch but we were watching television in the bedroom whilst our daughter commandeered the television in the living room for one of the inane comedies that she watches.

Last night's program was about a 26 year old woman whose father had left her when she was only her child; her mother remarried, and both the mother and stepfather turned away from the daughter. So basically, this woman never had a nuclear family (it makes me wonder what kind of a mother she is to her two small daughters). She expressed a wish to know who her father was and perhaps to meet him.

Eventually, the father was tracked down to a secluded village in the Kursk region of Russia (scene of a very important battle in the Second World War); the father remembered the daughter well and his version of how he left her was somewhat different to the mother's version. Eventually, the daughter flew to Russia, took the ten hour train ride from Moscow to Kursk and the necessary car ride in order to meet her father.

I suppose that this could be construed a very moving story but I found it voyeuristic in the extreme. I very much side with the woman's husband, who kept on asking why she needed to do this. The woman herself, after having met the father, admitted that she probably wouldn't be keeping in touch; the cultural differences between a rural Russian village (in which time seems to have stood still) and a modern Israeli town are too great.