All about AIDS

WHAT ails this week's TV? Symptoms include emotional delirium, mood swings and raised testosterone levels.

World AIDS Day, (December 1), attracting a grim, emotion-driven line-up from the TV stations, must take much of the blame. After well over a decade of information-gathering and prejudice-bashing, you would think that programme-makers could get past the sentimental and provide us with something new. Instead, they continue to bludgeon us with programmes on 'what it's like to have AIDS'.

All About Eve (Pearl) tells the harrowing story of an Australian girl with the disease. A premature baby, she received 11 blood transfusions, one of which infected her with HIV. Ostracised by her fellow Australians, she was forced to move to a less prejudiced environment (New Zealand) to die in peace.

STAR offers a similarly tragic tale, A Kid Called Troy. Troy caught the AIDS virus from his mother, Suzi (whose own fate is filmed for the prequel, Suzi's Story), who picked up HIV during a 'casual affair'. The all-intrusive camera charts his feelings and those of the people around him.

Feelings also dominate World's offering, Longtime Companion, which was arguably the first TV movie to focus on AIDS and homosexuals.

But there is something rotten in this state of emotional manipulation. In their haste to avoid prejudice, the programmes focus on the most sympathetic cases, particularly those involving children. Even Longtime Companion deals with gay men in stable relationships rather than the more promiscuous American homosexual population of the early '80s. They avoid the tricky issues such as drug-taking, sexual practices, family problems and an absurdly confused medical establishment. Only The Plague (Pearl) is sober enough to take a more cognitive approach and is all the more compelling for it.

Far less worthy viewing is a new series called Viper (Pearl), which is suspiciously similar to that '80s David Hasselhoff vehicle, Knight Rider: both boast a state-of-the-art phallic symbol, a 'command centre', mad inventor, streetwise mechanic and a rehabilitated, surgically-improved hero called Michael. Testosterone abounds. 'Who am I?' screams our dashing hero, who has had his memory erased by a civil servant in the name of justice. As he finds out over the course of the episode, he is an extension of a state-of-the-art car (a souped-up Chrysler Dodge Viper) that features a 'phobe panel', and 'hex armour'.

Cruising along streets so empty they must be from the set of The Green Hornet, he finds that in 'street mode' the car can pass as any old sports car. But when he takes on the bad guys (who, of course, drive black cars), a shift of a lever activates the car's 'defender mode'.

But for one big product placement for Chrysler cars, it is odd that despite the Viper's many gadgets, our hero's biggest battles are not with the bad guys but with a manual transmission as awkward as any second-hand Citroen 2CV's.

All About Eve is on Pearl at 8.30 pm on Thursday. A Kid Called Troy - ?? Suzi's Story - ?? Longtime Companion is on World at 9.30 pm on Thursday. The Plague is on Pearl at 11.45 pm today. Viper starts on Pearl at 9.30 pm on Tuesday.