Word: pbs
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...while sharing a New Orleans mansion. There's Joyce Bowler, 44, who persuaded her family to spend three hardship-filled months in a house outfitted with 100-year-old technology (or lack of it) for The 1900 House, a fascinating British show that made its debut last week on PBS. "[Celebrity] does become quite addictive," she says. "But you have to realize it's not your whole life. We don't do this for a profession." In VTV-crazed Europe, where Survivor and CBS's forthcoming voyeur game show Big Brother originated, ex-contestants have become pinups and pop stars...
...unlike TV actors, VTV stars don't know what their "characters" will be like until the show airs. In 1973 the Loud family of California became the test rabbits for the genre when PBS filmed their lives--including the coming out of son Lance and the breakup of the parents' marriage--in the seminal cinema-verite documentary An American Family. The Louds were utterly unprepared to become national symbols of suburban angst. "My mom was very proud of the family she had raised," says Lance, now 49. "It ultimately crushed her how much of the show's emphasis...
...hooker's toes and Ted Koppel walking out for lack of news. Viewers' attention spans were still too short: Ratings dropped 26 percent from 1992 for the GOP and 18 percent for the Democrats. So this time around, American politics' quadrennial summer showcase is being consigned to cable - and PBS, of course - where the junkies and the partisans can drink their fill...
...like all good metaphors, Gormenghast's works on other levels. To the tired bloodline of PBS-endorsed British programming, BBC America's appealing, often lacerating new-wave series are a Steerpike-like intruder. And for the delicate, powdered neck of proper Anglophile telly, the long knives...
...would have been easy to fill 24 hours with proven favorites. "People told me, 'The only things you can do are what you've already made a success of,'" Lee says. "Mysteries, classic dramas, maybe the more conservative sitcoms from PBS." Instead BBC America opted to distinguish itself with shows "closer to the new Beetle than to the Jaguar: vibrant, contemporary, different." While the network is not yet rated by Nielsen, it's the edgier programming--running in blocks called Cool Britannia and the Britcom Zone--that has inspired a dedicated audience following and critical praise. But the channel also...