THE BEST AND WORST OF TELEVISION

Some of the best TV in the world is conceived in this northern industrial city more known for grime, pollution and smokestacks than for creativity.

Granada Television--the creamiest and dreamiest of the companies composing Britain’s Independent Television (ITV)--is headquartered in Manchester, whose thriving cultural community belies its sooty image as purely a factory town.

“Good television is good for all television,” said Granada chairman Sir Denis Forman, sitting in his shirt sleeves and suspenders.

Granada is good. Very good.

Begun in 1956, Granada was on the TV map long before it gave us “The Jewel in the Crown,” a magnificent miniseries about the last wrenching days of the British Raj in India.

Other Granada productions that have reached the United States include the exquisite “Brideshead Revisited,” the recent, acclaimed “King Lear” with Laurence Olivier and an adventurous version of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” now on PBS.

Less known to Americans is Granada’s “Coronation Street,” Britain’s longest-running and most popular series ever, a cheeky serial that still often tops the ratings despite being in its 25th year on the air.

The current jewel in Granada’s crown is a 13-part documentary series now airing in Britain’s prime time. That’s right, a documentary series in commercial TV’s prime time.

The series is about television, so it’s called “Television.” And it’s a good bet to air in America via PBS if about $3 million can be raised to pay for the rights and adapting it for U.S. audiences.

That effort is now being spearheaded by KCET in Los Angeles and WNET in New York. In an encouraging cooperative move, they have supplied a combined $100,000 for a nine-month option on the 52-minute episodes, which would be lengthened for PBS and fronted by an American host.

“It’s a survey, a review,” Granada’s Forman said. “It doesn’t set out to be academic.”

Based on episodes I saw, it’s also fascinating and eye-opening, a grand panorama of clips and commentary telling the story of TV from a global perspective. American viewers deserve the chance to see it.

“Television” is “about humanity’s fastest-growing revolution,” the program’s narrator, Ian Holm, says. And it is about TV’s power over our lives.

Television is everything . . . everywhere.

On the screen, an African in tribal dress tells an interpreter, “We all gather in the village square and watch television.”

Television is a window, a dream factory. A prison TV flickers with images of Americans exploring space. “And here I am in a tiny cell,” an inmate says.

Much of our world is shaped by TV. “Even the IRA explodes bombs at 4 o’clock to be on the 6 o’clock news,” Holm says, and East Berlin authorities have found a creative way to “jam” West German newscasts from across the wall. They air popular Hollywood movies opposite the West German news. Then, exploiting the Hollywood movies as a lead-in, they follow with their own news.

And inside the Vatican, even God’s regent on earth understands the value of the camera. Yes, John Paul is the first “television Pope,” trailed and recorded everywhere by a Vatican TV crew.

Film at 11.

“Television” was three years in the making at an estimated cost of $4 million. Executive producer Norman Swallow wrote the synopsis in 1982. Production began a year later, and even now some of the latter episodes haven’t been fully assembled even though half of the series has aired.

It was Granada executive David Plowright who proposed the series, Swallow recalled. “He said we are in the middle of an extraordinary period of change in television, and if we didn’t do the series now, it would be too late.”

Granada sent film crews to a dozen countries and imported material from others.

“I think that Japan surprised me the most,” said Brian Blake, a producer-director on the series. “It is the most TV-oriented society other than America.”

The Japanese even have TVs in taxis, he said. “And when you go into a hairdresser’s shop, you see the women lined up having their hair done and each one has a TV set built into her mirror.”

It was only natural that Japan, the nation of ultra-TV, would conceive the ultimate TV game show, appropriately titled “Ultra Quiz.” Blake was appalled.

“It travels from country to country holding these endurance contests, starting out with hundreds of contestants, then whittling them down. You can’t believe what they put these contestants through, how they humiliate them, from throwing worms down their trousers to starving people for two days and then feeding them food that is frozen.

“They also did incredible things with insects,” Blake said, “and another thing they did was soak people with petrol and make them jump through fire hoops. But the contestants didn’t know the so-called petrol was really water.”

“Ultra Quiz” may be the ultra-expression of an aggressive, physically crushed and overcrowded nation where merely taking a jammed subway can be a life-threatening adventure.

“Their soap operas are really bloody samurai dramas,” Blake said. “I was told that they are release for all their tensions. I suppose game shows are the same.”

“Television” contains one chilling piece of footage from Japan--reminiscent of the movie “Network”--in which the producer of “Ultra Quiz” says that he is frightened by the escalation of game-show violence sought by Japanese viewers.

Where will it end? Will Japanese viewers someday demand that a losing contestant be executed? The producer nods grimly and replies: “In about 10 years.”

TV at its scariest. Appalling is hardly the word.