TV Reviews : ‘Global Impact of AIDS’ on Discovery Channel

“Crossover: The Global Impact of AIDS” (Sunday at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on the Discovery Channel) would have more impact if the current flood of TV documentaries on AIDS was just a trickle. Swedish film maker Staffan Hildebrand traveled the globe--Rio, Southeast Asia, Zambia, Paris, San Francisco--to track the disease’s world-wide spread. Few films have explored AIDS’ international implications, but Hildebrand’s approach is stunningly banal.

Only hermits and people who never read newspapers or watch TV will likely find any new, vital information here. It is interesting to see a van, roaming the Sydney streets at night and passing out condoms, clean needles and advice (especially as a clean-needle distribution program in New York has just been shut down). It is troubling to hear a U.S. soldier, on the prowl in a red-light section, dismiss AIDS as a homosexual disease.

But the globe-trotting Hildebrand never seems to explore whatever country he’s in. We’re in South Bronx one minute, then Paris, then an unidentified Asian city, and nothing is really learned about how attacking the disease in one area of the world might require different tactics than another. (Indeed, his camera seems to have a serious weakness for the tourist souvenir shot.) The exception is in central Africa, where schoolchildren are imaginatively instructed on the importance of the immune system.

Hildebrand’s camera subjects, such as film director Jean-Jacques Beiniex, often make meaningless pronouncements in impenetrably thick accents. (Beineix says this head-shaker: “(The young) don’t see any future because the older don’t care about the future.”) The warnings come down to these: Use condoms, don’t share needles, stick with one sex partner--and fighting AIDS is a race against time. Not even Martin Sheen’s narration makes the trip worthwhile.