Milking a revolutionary concept.

IN old Hollywood musicals, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney used to find an empty space and proclaim, "Let's put the show on here". There must have been times Cameron Mackintosh must have wished he could have done just that as he prepared to take the hit show Les Miserables to China.

This wasn't just any old show, but the first Western musical to be seen in Communist China. Since Mao's Communist Revolution of 1949 and the harsh cultural changes that followed, our culture has largely been kept out.

The revolutionary theme of Les Miserables was thought to make it particularly suitable to take to Shanghai. Besides, Mackintosh is a shrewd operator who knows there's a massive audience out there. If he could get just one per cent of the Chinese people into the theatre that would add up to ten million people. Set against the potential profit of future shows that could follow if this Les Mis did the business, the $1m he was risking in transferring the San Francisco production to Shanghai seemed measly.

This Omnibus film wasn't just a plug for Mackintosh's entrepreneurial skills. There was the suspense of whether they'd manage to open on time considering the myriad of problems including translating the script into Mandarin, having to incorporate Chinese musicians into the orchestra, and wigs going limp in the humid conditions. The other aspect of the documentary was the impact of this Western invasion on Chinese culture. The British Amabassador saw Les Mis as "a bit of the free market coming into play in China". Analyst Graham Hutchins felt that other productions would still be kept out if they touched on matters such as politics, Aids and homosexuality.

The final verdict went to the audience. Most thought it "excellent" and "wonderful". The verdict wasn't all good. "So-so, I prefer Peking Opera," muttered one man.

While Mackintosh was attempting something new, The First Pompeii Revealed provided a glimpse of a vanished world - one hidden beneath layers of pumice and ash, one frozen in time.

Most of us have heard how the eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried the Roman town of Pompeii 2,000 years ago. This programme revealed how, 1,800 years earlier, the same volcano wiped out a bronze age village.

The discovery of two prehistoric skeletons in 1995 alerted archaeologists to this earlier tragedy. Their digging unearthed an entire village. Excavations revealed buildings intact under the volcanic material. For the first time it was possible to see what Bronze Age houses looked like. Food and plant remains gave clues to what people ate. Ceramics showed how they ate their meals. No bodies were found within the village, only animals including goats and a dog.

The programme's conclusion was not very cheerful for those living near the site near Naples. Vesuvius has been quiet since 1944, but the skeletons are a chilling forecast of what could happen in the future.