Oceans Apart: Art and the Pacific with James Fox
BBC FOUR, 9.00PM
A considered and engaging guide to everything from art in the open air (Forest, Field & Sky) to cityscapes and those they inspired (Bright Lights, Brilliant Minds), Dr James Fox here turns his attention to the impact of Western ideas on Pacific culture and vice versa in the years since Captain Cook left on his first voyage 250 years ago. He begins with Australian Aboriginal art and the devastating, marginalising effect of Westernisation that took the nation’s indigenous people generations to recover from. The result is a programme sometimes breathtaking and always enlightening. It’s followed at 10pm by Handmade in the Pacific: Yidaki, which looks at the making of the Aboriginal didgeridoo. GT