TV REVIEW : A Look at Volunteers, At-Risk Youths

If all you ever knew from birth was a trash-strewn, graffiti-filled neighborhood where poverty, violence and death were the norm, how would you get out? Where would you find enough hope to try?

In “Gettin’ Over,” an informal, half-hour ABC documentary, the first of a three-part series (at 8:30 tonight on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42), viewers meet some young people who are struggling to change their lives and some adult volunteers who are helping in that struggle.

An unwed teen mother in South-Central Los Angeles with two small children counsels other teens . . . a boxing coach helps a high school dropout in New York . . . a 92-year-old woman organizes a tutoring program to match senior citizens with at-risk youth.

At first glance, this is typical, celebrity-driven, tabloid TV. The simplistic format includes a montage of gritty images, not much analysis and such groan lines from host Tony Danza as, “This is night school: the streets. Attendance here, no problem.”

It is soon apparent, however, that Danza is sincerely involved, not just on hand to exude professional sympathy, and the images reach deep: Children walk to school through unspeakably ravaged streets, a mother “smuggles” her son onto campus to get his assignments because he fears for his life if he’s seen.

The one-time high school dropout cries in his coach’s arms after winning a Golden Gloves championship, the teen mother lays it on the line for her peers--”I was a fool,” she tells them--and a young African-American boy and his tutor, an elderly white woman, find mutual validation in the uncomplicated affection they share.

There’s no discussion of the social and political factors that created and perpetuate conditions that make such help necessary, but one-on-one volunteerism is making a difference for some.