TV Reviews : New PBS Culture Series Has a Sharp ‘Edge’

A man is on the screen during tonight’s PBS premiere of a monthly pop culture series titled “Edge,” questioning whether members of a particular race have what it takes for a particular job:

“I’ve never said they can’t do it. I just think that . . . if they do it, they know they’re gonna hear about it, or that they best be prepared, y’know, to really have someone by their side or holding (their) hand all the way through.”

It’s not exactly Al Campanis, who is white, saying that blacks haven’t the “necessities” to manage in the big leagues, a racist-sounding assertion on “Nightline” that cost him his front-office job with the Los Angeles Dodgers. But it’s close enough.

However, the man quoted above is not white. He’s black director Spike Lee, publicly doubting that any Caucasian could effectively direct the film about murdered black leader Malcolm X that Lee was hired to direct after claiming director Norman Jewison could not handle the job because he was white.

A white expressing that about a black would surely catch a lot of heat. Although “Edge” may not have intended to deliver this message about a double standard, it’s there, and Lee’s bluntness is one of many moments in the hour that holds your attention.

“Edge” airs at 8 p.m. on KVCR Channel 24 and at 9 p.m. on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15. A co-production of the BBC and WNET of New York, it both visually and emotionally engages you as few series do. In delivering an off-center TV magazine of heady reflection and witty smarts, executive producer Steven Weinstock is on the cutting edge of freshness.

The tone is set when ever-mocking host Robert Krulwich of NPR and “CBS This Morning” opens the hour in an elevator, speaking seriously as his face appears distorted by the camera’s close-up.

“Edge” guest reporters invade alien environments. Here is Buck Henry, looking as comfortable as Dan Quayle among Hell’s Angels while interviewing Deadheads at Grateful Dead concerts. He asks a vendor why he keeps returning, and the man replies: “Oh, man, it’s the song.”

And author-social critic Studs Turkel predicts, angrily, that any memorial to the Persian Gulf War will surely be “a thing! A missile!”

What a highly promising start for “Edge,” a series you’ll welcome back again and again. Oh, man, it’s the song.