Where I live there is no free-to-air service. Our household relies on Austar’s basic package with the most watched channels being the weather channel & Sky news. It’s like that in the bush. Some areas get crystal clear reception and only a few km’s down the road… a black hole. Forget about your voda phones & iphones, you need a trusty brick like telstra job to get mobile service out here and even then it’s patchy. So what joy to find myself in front of a TV last night with the first airing of the mini-series The Pacific. This new series set during WW2 is hard, brutal, gripping stuff and it’s factually written with veterans interspersing the action with real life accounts of their involvement. Leading up to Anzac Day surely some respect should be given to the factual framework on which such a programme rests. It is disappointing then to hear reviewers label it irrelevant. When did war become irrelevant? When did well researched, albeit Hollywoodised dramas depicting a major turn in the war in the Pacific become something that is considered uninteresting to the wider TV audience. Reviewers have been known to incite conversation. If it means people younger than me turn on the TV and watch a period in history that is little known to them, then perhaps it’s a conversation worth having. For me as I tour around NSW, free-to-air TV is a priviledge, I think it should be a basic right.