Bob Geldof Visits The Many Sides Of Africa

By DENISE DUGUAY

Montreal, June 16, 2007 – Readers courting or having come to terms with midlife crises might recall Bob Geldof as the former front man of the Boomtown Rats, whose best known hit was 1979's I Don't Like Mondays.

Gen-Xers might know him as the mastermind behind Live AID, a day-long multi-city concert in 1985 featuring major rock acts; it was seen by an estimated 1.6 billion people around the world and was credited with raising about $71 million for aid to Africa.

Others probably know Geldof as the fellow standing beside fellow Irishman Bono last week berating Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other G8 leaders for their responses to the humanitarian crisis in Africa.

His increasing politicization over the years might lead a viewer to be a little suspicious of Geldof in Africa, a six-part series coming to the Travel+Escape digital TV service next week.

But don't let fear of a lecture keep you from this tremendously good series. True, Geldof uses these six half-hours to continue his campaign to raise Africa from its troubles. But this is not the Geldof who demanded people "Give us your money!" during Live AID. Or at least not so strident a Geldof. He declares up front what he and we know: Many people in many African countries are trapped and living - or dying - in poverty and violence.

"And we will come back to that," Geldof says in Episode 1, "but there are other Africas." Because this series is a gorgeous and even occasionally funny campaign for you to open your mind, not your wallet.

After a sweeping introduction that covers the spectacular geographical extremes of desert to tropical forests, Geldof sets down in a country rarely out of the news, Somalia. More accurately, he starts in Somaliland, a self-declared "country" that he points out is not recognized as such by any other country.

However, his stop there illustrates well the goal of this series: The beauty of Africa is its people, and he holds up Somalilanders as the face of a more peaceful, more democratic Africa, despite being within the political boundaries of Somalia. Canada's Foreign Affairs website (http://www.voyage.gc.ca/), describes the country, including Somaliland, as unsafe.

It also allows his occasional wit to emerge as he points out such tourist sites, if there were tourists there, as the pigeon of peace traffic roundabout, the concrete map of Somaliland car wash and the MiG fighter plane donkey stand.

A darker humor sprouts up in Somalia when he tells the camera how Somalia is ruled by "warlords, basically armed thugs who operate a giant country in their own self-interest." The punch line is that he is surrounded at that moment by more than a dozen armed soldiers who are "accompanying" him. Either they don't understand what he is saying or don't care.

Many stops are sadly moving: an abandoned Somalian port city, and later, in Episode 2, the haunted slave dungeons of Ghana's Cape Coast Castle. But the absolutely gorgeous vistas of which the series takes full advantage, and the people are the great parts of this series. There's Mavis, on the bus, who helps Geldof realize after many hours of waiting that the bus will leave when the bus leaves. And the farmers he encounters on a road in West Africa, whom Geldof uses to pose the question, "If this farm produces bananas, pineapples, apples, oranges, coconuts, the cola nut and cocoa bean, and they sell them to the richest companies on the planet, why aren't these people living in villas on the riviera or something?"

OK, so Geldof travel host can't resist letting Geldof aid activist come out to play. But truly, don't let that scare you off this look at Africa that will be the closest most of us get to that gorgeous continent.

Geldof in Africa airs Tuesdays at 10:30 p.m. on Travel+Escape starting June 19.

I have to give so-called reality television one thing: Their hosts are slick. Even the reserved Phil Keoghan can muster a bit of blushing charm when embraced by a gratefully spared contestant on The Amazing Race.

Not so with Marlon Perkins, stiff-as-a-board patriarch of the great nature show Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. But it's not Perkins's wooden delivery that earned kudos for his series about animals in the wild. It was the adventures of Perkins and colleagues who, beginning in 1963, startled viewers by such feats as wrestling a wildebeest to the ground in South Africa by speeding alongside it in a jeep and grabbing it by the horns. All in the name of tagging for research or rescuing or other laudable goals.

As the Animal Planet digital television service launches a new season of the revived series, it kicks off with a look back at the most daring moments from the series archives. See Perkins wrestle an anaconda in the South American country of Guyana and almost lose the match. See one of his colleagues scramble up a tree after a failed attempt to capture an American grizzly in need of relocation.

Destinations in this retro episode cover the globe. Regular episodes, airing Sundays and starting July 1, check in on Asiatic lions in the Gir Forest of northwest India, prairie dogs and other critters of the American prairies, and Sancho, the giant otter, who resides in Brazil's Pantanal wetland.

Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: Magnificent Moments airs Sunday, June 24, at 8 p.m. on Animal Planet.

Broadcast times are subject to change. Check with Saturday's TV Times. For more on the digital services listed, go to http://travelandescape.ca/, www.animalplanet.ca or check with your cable or satellite provider.

Source: The Gazette ( Montreal)

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