PBS Takes Another Try at Looking at ‘Life 360’

“Life 360” is getting a second chance at life. A new season of its single-themed episodes begins with a look at “Monuments,” or what it means to remember.

The PBS series, launched last fall, was to have been a centerpiece of public broadcasting’s ambitious attempt to reinvigorate its lineup. But viewers didn’t respond in great numbers to the show’s quirky mix of documentary and performing arts, exploring topics from food to fate. The series was pulled in January to make way for a more topical public affairs program from Bill Moyers.

Rather than cancel “Life 360,” a co-production of Oregon Public Broadcasting and ABC News’ “Nightline,” PBS sent it back for retooling. KCET will begin airing the new episodes Thursday at 10 p.m. They will continue through the summer.

The series had the unfortunate luck to launch almost immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Initial episodes had to be reworked to take out some humor, which suddenly seemed inappropriate, and a big promotional campaign was scrapped. New segments were quickly put together that examined the aftermath of the attacks, but viewers’ interests were elsewhere.

The show, said anchor Michel Martin, was “conceived in an environment where everyone else was doing Gary Condit and one of our main goals was to do programming that didn’t involve eating bugs.”

But overnight, she said, the attacks and the resulting foreign policy upheaval became a cultural marker “that demands that you absorb it in some way. How to do it is one of the overlying issues we’ve been struggling with.”

Sept. 11 still looms large in the first episode, which revolves around a road trip that contributor Ron Suskind took to South Dakota following the attacks. He talks to fellow travelers about the permanence of Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands, and pokes around kitschier monuments, including a Corn Palace and an oversized drugstore. ABC’s Robert Krulwich is back, with a look at how Grant’s Tomb fell out of fashion. Comedian Jake Johannsen deals directly with the attacks, examining the kind of monument New Yorkers want to see in the empty space. Loudon Wainwright sings a tribute to New York.

To pick up the pace this season, the musical interludes in each hourlong show have been pared from two to one. There are no more live audiences, and some of the longer pieces have been trimmed.

The animated segments in the program remain, giving a visual twist to person-on-the-street interviews, and the show still relies on more relaxed, personal forms of storytelling and not-so-obvious thematic diversions, such as the examination of roadside accident markers in the “Monuments” show. One addition is an interview Martin will do each week to add focus to the topic at hand. “We wanted more coherence in the exploration of each theme,” she said.

A tight budget means the shows are put together far ahead of time, presenting a challenge to guess what viewers will be interested in when they are broadcast, Martin said. The summer’s nine new installments will look at the weighty theme of redemption--spinning off of Sept. 11 again but also venturing into a lighter profile of the lead understudy of Broadway’s “The Producers”--as well as family secrets, neighbors, even 10-year-olds. Four additional hours will be repackaged from the fall, with some new material added to the mix.

“Life 360” is meant to be a combination of “the serious, profound and simply delightful,” Martin said. Finding an audience will still be a challenge as some PBS stations nationwide have relegated the show to off hours.

“You hope that people understand that when you try things, you have to experiment, to take risks, and you’re not always going to hit it out of the park on the first try,” Martin said. “We think we had a good show to build on and a better show this season.”