August 31, 2007

What to Watch: Coming Up on Cable

Tube Stake: Programming Reviews by Seth Arenstein

THE PEOPLE'S PRINCESS: Starz revisits Diana's death.

• SATURDAY, SEPT. 1

Grand Slam, 7pm ET, GSN.

[The following sentences are written purely for recreational purposes and do not condone wagering or any of its ancillary activities, such as wearing loud, polyester shirts and drinking excessively.]

In the semi-finals (the finals are Sept 8, 7pm ET) of this lightning-fast quiz of the best game show contests our money is riding on Ken Jennings (ranked #2 at the contest’s start), the lord of Jeopardy, who won that show for months on end. Of course, Jennings has an unfair advantage—at some point in his life, Jennings’ brain was replaced with a calculator.

Our other pick is the dark horse, the bottom-ranked Michelle Kitt (#14), who won big on The Weakest Link. Don’t be influenced by the shows that the contestants won. Each of the final four, who include David Legler (#5) of Twenty One and Ogi Ogas (#9) of Millionaire, have proven themselves.

Although snarky host Dennis Miller has gotten most of the press, the show’s contestants deserve the kudos, answering questions at breakneck pace under the lights. Amazing.

[For more amazing times, after tonight’s show GSN hosts a live chat with the four from 8-9pm ET at GSN.com.]

Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel, 10:45pm ET, Starz Cinema.

If you watch one Diana special to mark the anniversary of her death ten years ago, this magnificently built timeline is probably the best.

What makes this documentary from England's Channel 4 so good is its attention to detail—we are told how long it took to get Diana out of the Mercedes and into the ambulance, for example, and how long it took for the ambulance to reach the hospital—and the eyewitnesses who take part in it.

This group includes tourists, the French doctor and a friend who were passing by the accident scene just seconds after the crash, a BBC anchorman, tabloid editors and, yes, three members of the paparazzi, who were arrested. Be warned: this is somewhat of a contrarian piece as the paparazzi are treated gently here.

One thing that struck us, though, was a throwaway remark by Ken Lennox, photo editor of News of the World and The Sun for years. Noting how the pictures of what looked to be a lightly bruised Diana in the crumpled car were usable, priceless almost, until she died (once Diana died using the shots would be in poor taste), Lennox says a piece about a dead Princess is awful, but one about a slightly injured Princess “is a great story.”   

It's also worth noting that the Starz version of this special removes the controversial images of Diana in the car wreck, including graphic images of Diana being treated, that were featured in the original Channel 4 documentary.

Somehow we think the Queen — whose Oscar-winning portrayal by Dame Helen Mirren (as directed by Stephen Frears in The Queen) precedes this documentary at 9pm on Starz, would approve.

• TUESDAY, SEPT. 4

Lincoln Heights, Season 2 premiere, 8pm ET, ABC Family

In season two of HBO’s Big Love, Bill Henrickson (the polygamous patriarch played by Bill Paxton) juggles three wives with various needs, a failed business expansion, teenage kids who want to sow their oats and may not follow their parents’ polygamous lifestyle, not to mention parents and a brother who are a handful.

But if misery loves company, Paxton could commiserate with Eddie Sutton (Russell Hornsby), the patriarch on Lincoln Heights, although he’d probably not reveal his three-way marital arrangements.

Season one of ABC Family’s drama series Lincoln Heights put Eddie under a fair amount of stress at work (he’s an African-American police officer in a rough part of Los Angeles) and home (he’s convinced his middle-class family of a wife and three teens to move to a rough neighborhood as part of city sponsored program).

Tonight’s season two opener makes season one’s pressures seem like the good old days. It also throws a curveball on the normal TV series technique of ending a season with a potboiler episode. Tonight we get the sizzle of a season finale in the opening episode of the season.

We won’t reveal the substance of tonight’s show; suffice it to say that every member of the Sutton clan is under attack, with dad getting a particularly heavy dose of reality. The tension explodes at the episode’s outset and builds throughout, as we see everyone fall under the influence of tension in the neighborhood.

Like last season, those who want to see a good police drama will be tempted by Lincoln Heights, but ultimately disappointed. Often the police procedure shown is accurate and compelling. When it veers from reality, as it does at times tonight, Lincoln Heights suffers a bit. Fans of relationship-heavy family stories—but not stories composed of G-rated material—will be more satisfied with tonight’s denouement.

• THURSDAY, SEPT. 6

9/11’s Toxic Dust, 10pm ET, A&E

How many times since 9/11 have you cursed Osama Bin Laden as you bent down to put on and re-tie your shoes after passing through an airport metal detector? This reminder can be seen as 9/11’s second wave.  It’s trivial compared to what the people in this brief, but informative, A&E documentary are handling.

At first it seems like a parody of the news. Then you realize it’s tasteless as a piece of satire, but poignant in a very sad way. The first 5 minutes of 9/11’s Toxic Dust introduces four people who were in good health on Sept. 10. Subsequently they have gotten sick—one, a NYC police officer, has contracted Leukemia; another, a telecom worker, has bone cancer. It’s possible their illnesses, and those of some 20K others, are related to toxins spread in the dust after the 9/11 attack.

But back to the tasteless parody. In the 6th minute of the piece, then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman is shown in two clips at Ground Zero, presumably early after 9/11, answering questions from reporters. She assures them the air quality is not dangerous. “If there’s any good  news out of all this,” Whitman says in the second clip, “it’s that everything we’ve tested for … asbestos, lead and VOCs (volatile organic compounds) have been below any level of concern for the general public health …” And then she coughs.

A&E does its best to deliver a balanced piece, but it looks like the EPA, and possibly others, blew it in the days and months after 9/11. A scientist who’s examined air samples from the area says the mix of Benzene, lead and other gases released that day may be unprecedented. The initial explosion, when the twin towers fell, wasn’t the biggest problem—that released into the air cement particles, glass shards and 400K pounds of asbestos. As piles of debris smoldered, bits of material in computers, metal, electrical cable and glassware, made a nasty cocktail of fine particles and acids that rescue workers inhaled for the next three months.

That mix, some argue, may have been unprecedented, says Dr. Thomas Cahill, professor emeritus, U of California. Baghdad pales by comparison, he adds. The EPA, by October 2001, had better measurements than when Whitman was shown on camera, Cahill charges, and should have changed its tune, but didn’t.

While there's no doubt the people who are suffering today is a crisis, some doctors say things could get worse. Benzene exposure is known to cause cancer, but there’s a latency period. People exposed to 9/11’s toxic dust could get cancer 20-30 years from now. Some 70K people were exposed doing rescue work at Ground Zero.

And then there are people who lived and worked in neighborhoods adjacent to Ground Zero. A&E profiles one such person. Office worker Lea Geronimo is breaking out in rashes all over her body, and she’s had bronchitis 10 times since 9/11, and she’s got psoriasis outside her body but also her doctors believe it’s growing inside her.

But this documentary is not all science and medicine. The stories of the four people profiled are emotionally wrenching, even more so because they are fighting not only for their lives but also for compensation from NY City and private companies, whom they say were negligent. A second wave. Indeed, a third and fourth wave.

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