THE curtain goes up on World's new current affairs programme today, following the axing of the worthy, but often dull Monday Monitor.
Chief presenter Sally Round promises that its replacement, Inside Story (World 8.30pm) will be ''more up-beat - still serious, but not too earnest''.
The format too has become more flexible, no longer comprising two main stories, but usually one in-depth report and several shorter ones. Overseas in-put will come from links with an American programme called Inside Edition and from an Australian TV channel.
The first programme includes a look at the dangers of dabbling in foreign exchange, and Mona Liu talking to a trans-sexual, a man who's in the process of becoming a woman, about the psychological problems involved.
NOT to be outdone, the competition's weekly current affairs show, The Pearl Report (7.35pm) travels to Vietnam to cover a story that involves Shakespeare, Ho Chi Minh and a British lawyer.
The Hongkong Players recently became the first English-language theatre company to perform in Vietnam, a trip that came about because of a connection with the daughter of a British lawyer who helped free Ho Chi Minh from a Hongkong jail in the 1930s.
JONATHAN Demme's Married to the Mob (Pearl 9.45pm, Original Running Time 103 mins) is a gloriously tacky send up the low-life characters involved in organised crime.