TV REVIEWS

Also on PBS tonight is “The Flapper Story,” a lively, informative documentary about some of this century’s first liberated women. The half-hour film airs at 8:30 p.m. on Channel 50, at 9:30 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15 and at 10:30 p.m. on Channel 24.

Combining film footage and music from those Roaring ‘20s with interviews with former flappers, writer-producer Lauren Lazin effectively sketches the historical and social context in which these young women, literally and symbolically, broke out of the girdles that had constrained their mothers and grandmothers. She concludes that the rebellion died with the beginning of the Depression because its roots were personal, not political--in other words, a fad.