TV Reviews : Heavy-Handed Narration Undermines ‘Local Heroes’

“Local Heroes, Global Change” (airing at 10 tonight on KCET Channel 28) is a four-part series that claims to examine fresh solutions to the Third World’s poverty and hunger.

Tonight’s segment, “With Our Own Eyes,” offers a look at two programs that are successful--according to the show’s philosophical underpinning--primarily because they are not large international aid programs.

That philosophical bias is a major problem of “With Our Own Eyes”--significant enough to undermine much of the good intentions of the producers. The program sets up straw dogs like “Bad Big Government” with unsupported statements such as “famines have all been political,” then knocks them down without demonstrating any basis for those allegations.

The segment on Indonesian rice growing is a perfect example. Instead of simply saying that the original “Green Revolution” wasn’t a complete success, “Eyes” makes it look almost sinister. In reality, the program made some mistakes through the years--over-reliance on pesticides, for example--and new methods have been found that are better. The same could be said for nearly any human enterprise. Would the producers have preferred that no foreign aid was given?

Few would argue with the idea that development programs work best when they are tailored for the local culture. But “With Our Own Eyes” argues that there are hidden political forces--the big “isms” of course: racism, sexism and so on--hindering such efforts. Again, little proof is offered, and the show’s heavy-handed narration almost defeats an otherwise engrossing segment on Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, a loan program targeted to the landless and women.