Under the Radar but on the Screen: Survivors and Prostitues
By Barry Garron
Here comes another in our occasional series of informal online TV reviews. There's never enough space to review every new program in the printed edition. Here are a couple that didn't make the cut:
"I Survived," 6 p.m. Monday (PT), March 24, The Biography Channel
This weekly series seeks out people who barely survived frightening, harrowing and traumatic situations. Then it puts them through the experience all over again.
Nearly as bad, at least for the viewer, there are no reenactments. Except for a generic shot or two, the entire program consists of survivors speaking against a black background. That makes the series both sensational and cheap.
In the premiere, a young teacher (left) tells how she was robbed in her apartment, driven to a field and raped and then shot three times. Two young men recalled the crash of the small plane in which they were passengers and their desperate call to 911. And, finally, there's a guy trapped in his car in a blizzard for two weeks.
Your heart goes out to all of them, especially since this show makes you feel like a voyeur being entertained by their private pain.
"Sex Workers or Victims?" 9 p.m. Sunday, March 30, Oxygen
Given the prostitution scandal that recently cost New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer his office, you might be expecting a program about the women who make a living turning tricks. This is nothing of the sort.
This program, part of Lisa Ling's "Who Cares about Girls?" documentary series, looks specifically at underage prostitutes. Chances are, no matter how you feel about prostitution as a crime, you'll agree young teens shouldn't be involved.
Through interviews and footage of young hookers, Ling tells how girls get caught up in the system, how they are manipulated into staying with abusive pimps and how most cities do little to help these children break free. Adult prostitution may be victimless, particularly in places where it has been decriminalized, but this is a whole different situation, as Ling's troubling, eye-opening documentary makes all too clear.
