Frances Grant: Death and the children

Waiter! There's a hairy woman in my quality doco feast! Prime, which we are busy commending for its run of thoughtful documentaries on Sunday nights, suddenly dished up an offering about the hidden hirsute nature of the female body, Hairy Women.

Let's hope it was a passing aberration among the otherwise excellent offerings, from The Real Da Vinci Code to the big BBC natural history number for the year, Planet Earth. What were the Hairy Women doing in that mix?

"Don't complain," says the waiter, "or they'll all want one."

Yes, while the other channels are falling over themselves to offer freak show docos or extended promos for their dramas (witness 20/20 on Grey's Anatomy) where you might hope something intelligent might be, Prime has chosen a different row to hoe.

Thankfully it was back on target last Sunday with the chilling Death in Gaza, by British journalist James Miller, gunned down by the Israeli Army while filming.

But while Miller's death informed the programme, it didn't detract from his purpose, which was to film the children caught in the conflict. And how extraordinary they were, in the way their dignity and lust for life shone through their daily terror.

These are kids who collect the bloody remains of bomb victims so every shred of flesh is given a martyr's burial. They are kids who enchant then suddenly shock, like the smiling and articulate girl of about 4 or 5, who informed us that Israelis were "the sons of dogs".

These kids were breathtakingly open and loyal, despite the constant politicisation and hatred they receive as their education, and the horror that stalks them on the streets. Little Mohammed's greatest fear was of his best mate Ahmed dying as a martyr without him dying beside him.

In one of the saddest scenes we saw a starstruck Ahmed being coached by hooded militia members who, when quizzed about the dangers they might be leading him into, replied that there was hundreds of kids lining up behind him.

A flicker of understanding of his disposability on Ahmed's face was the documentary's most searing moment.

While the children of Gaza are dying by bomb or bullet, the children of the West are struggling with a lethal legacy of crap consumerism.

TV3's Honey We're Killing the Kids has the usual humiliation rituals of reality TV. Failing parents are hauled into what looks like Room 101 in the Ministry of Truth to be reprogrammed by child psychologist Kris Murrin. There, thanks to computer imaging, they are forced to watch their offspring age before their eyes into ugly, unhappy adults with a short life span.

One poor couple's daughters were photo-shopped into looking like the three witches from Macbeth. Next come the rules the parents must follow to save their kids from death by too much junk food and TV.

After they've abided by the rules, spent a bit of quality time with their kids and improved their diets, they're allowed back to see new images of their kids as happy, smiling, healthy adults. Sure, the families benefit from this but it's a spectacularly emotionally manipulative way to teach people good parenting.

Despite the obscene gulf between the two programmes, there is an echo between this and Gaza. The kids have a dignity and spirit that transcends the degradations thrust on them by the occupying forces. The kids' resistance to greens and reading books disintegrates in their delight in overcoming the defeatist propaganda of their parents and showing just how victorious they can be.