On TV last night...

THE Killing Of Kashmir provided a reminder that Iraq may grab all the headlines but there are other parts of the world where civilians are caught between factions eager to control their country.

It was difficult to reconcile the picture of the Kashmiri capital of Srinigar with the place I visited two decades ago. Soldiers patrol the streets, people are dragged from their houses never to be seen again, torture and beatings are routine.

Sandra Jordan reported from the front line 15 years after the situation flared up. Most Kashmiri people, she said, want independence but are trapped in the middle of half a million Indian troops and police fighting militant groups backed by Pakistan.

She began with an account of police beating and tear-gassing a group of women, protesting over the seizure of a mother and father from their home.

Protesters feared the couple would join "the disappeared" - people taken by the authorities and never seen again. Some 8,000 have gone missing in this way since the troubles began.

Jordan maintained that security forces and militants alike "take who they want - they torture and they kill". Much of what she showed backed this up.

The mother was released, after Jordan and a Kashmiri TV news team arrived on the scene. She had been severely beaten. The father, accused of having links to a pro-Pakistan political party, remained in custody.

Jordan found people were reluctant to voice opinions to the cameras, fearful of reprisals because it's risky to criticise either side. But she received tip-offs sending her to the scene of shootings and violence.

"We arrived at the morgue at the same time as one of Kashmir's most wanted militants," she said. The difference was that she was walking and his bloody corpse was lying dead on a stretcher.

In one intriguing incident, she attended a shoot-out between police and militants in a house. The bodies of two militants were brought out. "This must have been where they were killed, there's so much blood here," she said, after being allowed inside by the Indian army.

Talking to people in the neighbourhood revealed a different story. The militants had been killed elsewhere, brought to the house and a shoot-out staged. The security forces were putting a spin on the deaths of the top militants.

Finally, Jordan journeyed to a remote mountaintop village in contested territory. Villagers there live in constant fear of shells, which had been fired on houses where children were sleeping. Both sides accuse them of helping the other side.

The camera crew dodged the army to talk to these people. It was a rare chance for their voices to be heard. "Nobody speaks for these people," said Jordan, trying to redress that.

Things We Do For Love, Harrogate Theatre

COMEDY is hardly an ideal word to describe Alan Ayckbourn's play, a piece drenched in pain and humiliation involving three flats, four people and a multitude of sins.

There are laughs - we all find the sight of a chubby man in a nice frock funny, don't we? - but his exploration of the human condition proves pretty bleak.

It takes its time setting up the situation but, once Christopher Luscombe's production finds its feet, the momentum builds until the no holds barred finale.

As usual, Ayckbourn's seekers of love come equipped with all manner of problems. Barbara (Janine Wood) has remained single and happy, after her sole sexual experience with the school caretaker's son.

Little does she realise that her basement lodger Gilbert (Rod Arthur) is obsessed by her to the point of creating a bedroom ceiling painting of a larger-than-life Barbara in a room festooned with her clothes, that he was supposed to take to the charity shop.

Their domestic set-up is upset by the arrival of Nikki (Cate Debenham-Taylor), an old school friend she hasn't seen for 11 years, and her partner Hamish (Robin Cameron) in the top flat in Janet Bird's impressive upstairs, downstairs set.

Passions are aroused, loved ones betrayed and an awful lot of sherry drunk before a literal battle of the sexes and a happy ending of sorts.

Janine Wood handles prickly Barbara's mood swings well, while Rod Arthur's pervy postman Gilbert manages to gain sympathy as well as laughs.

l Runs until April 24. Tickets (01423) 502116.

Steve Pratt

Halle Orchestra, Newcastle City Hall

WHEN Britain's longest established orchestra appeared at Newcastle City Hall it was to a surprisingly depleted audience. Halle Orchestra maestro Mark Elder was drawn to remark that had the programme included Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto "we would perhaps have sold more seats". He went on to promise something out of the ordinary. And for those who did not make it, they missed a rare treat as the Halle took on some of the less performed, but no less rewarding works.

The programme began with Wagner's Prelude and Good Friday Music from Parsifal, with the strings seeming to well up from the bowels of the earth. Elder lovingly and unhurriedly drew out the central themes; the pregnant pauses between passages immaculately timed. His interpretation was nothing short of transcendental.

And then for something completely different. The Horn Concerto by the Halle's associate composer Colin Matthew was greeted with mixed feelings, but had everyone's attention. Played with eloquence and skill by soloist Richard Watkins, the work was heralded by a chorus of horns out of view of the main audience before he entered from one side with a forlorn call. Watkins performed an animated and sometimes fractious exchange with the orchestra centre stage, before he made his exit on the opposite side. The peripatetic device had people wondering at its significance.

The evening was wrapped up with a vibrant rendition of Mendelssohn's Symphony 5, with some sublime passages from the andante third movement and a furious finale that had the heart racing.The audience made up for its size in the volume of its appreciation, calling Elder back three times to shower him with well deserved applause.

Gavin Engelbrecht