TV Reviews : A Voyeuristic Look at Life in the Streets

“Street Stories,” the two-hour, fifth-season premiere of CBS’ “48 Hours” (airing at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8), is a smorgasbord of vignettes loosely linked by the fact that most of them revolve around activity on the pavements of our cities.

Some of the stories are engrossing; all of them are voyeuristic. Despite anchor Dan Rather’s well-written and well-delivered lines about the “very personal stories of life and death,” there is a definite feel of pandering to “Street Stories.” The show’s subtitle could easily be “Murder! Hookers! Drugs! Gangs! Teen-Age Runaways! Wow!”

The most effective segments are one about the murder of a Radio City Music Hall Rockette by a schizophrenic homeless man and another that follows a former middle-class would-be ballerina now working as a prostitute in San Francisco. Each does a decent job stitching together the history of those involved and the reactions of their families. Other segments don’t fare as well; they are not fleshed out. Keep the remote handy.