Trains, action and damsels in distress

THERE'S been much recent debate about the ABC and its outsourcing of programs and the axing of several long-running popular shows.

Stunt Love

THERE'S been much recent debate about the ABC and its outsourcing of programs and the axing of several long-running popular shows.

But it's simply wrong to suggest dedicated arts programming is about to all but disappear from its schedule.

Art Nation I'll miss, a sad reminder of the disheartening regularity with which such programs come and go, but it was hardly compulsory viewing. We tend to be impatient with ABC's arts programming though the public broadcaster is the only free-to-air network interested in creating a diverse slate of shows that deal with culture, whether high or low.

ABC detractors simply failed to mention the unmissable Artscape, the home of ABC TV's distinctive half-hour arts programs, which happily is still with us. It's a favourite of mine. It includes the series Artists at Work, In Conversation, The Art Life, Not Quite Art, Anatomy, and the latest ABC and independent arts documentaries.

The In Conversation interviews Virginia Trioli conducted with Bryan Ferry, Marianne Faithfull and Annie Leibovitz were a delight. So too is tonight's documentary movie Stunt Love, nicely written and directed by Matthew Bate, and produced by Caroline Man, which was developed with the South Australian Film Corporation and the Adelaide Film Festival. This is almost literarily a knock-out, the story of Australia's J. P. "Jack" McGowan and his on-screen daredevil wife, stuntwoman Helen Holmes, an epic romance about one of Hollywood's first stunt directors set against the birth of cinema. (It features interviews with legendary stuntman Mad Max's Grant Page, who is remarkably still alive.) Jack was dubbed the "Railroad Man" due to his specialisation in train-themed films. He was a pioneer of technology, editing and sequence construction, forging new rules and even famously inventing the legendary iconography of the damsel tied to the railway line.

Artscape: Stunt Love, 10.05pm, ABC1