Frances Grant: Terror without reason

COMMENT

One night on telly last week a small victim of terror stood out, sandwiched though she was between two obsessions of the affluent western world: what we eat and our bodies.

There was something deeply disturbing about switching from swanning around southeast Asia in search of exotic foods in Taste Takes Off to an 8-year-old schoolgirl, Vika from Beslan, talking about Chechen "militants" and suicide bombers in the Expose documentary School Siege — The Survivors' Stories.

Vika has the kind of clear-eyed solemnity that living through an atrocity can give, factually detailing how she made friends with one of the women suicide bombers so she would be allowed to drink water in the stifling heat of the school gymnasium crammed with hundreds of, mainly, child hostages.

The narration of the documentary was far more emotive, telling us without further explanation that these female suicide bombers were known as "black widows". To Vika they were people, however outrageous and baffling their actions.

Sadly the documentary, though honourable in intent, didn't do justice to the many moving and harrowing stories it recorded from the survivors of massacre in Beslan. We were left almost as bewildered as the children as to what might cause a group of men and women to perpetrate such an act.

Russia's war in Chechnya was reduced to a few references and an interview with an ex-pat Chechen leader who warned that such things could happen again. The perspective never shifted to the people of Chechnya and their suffering.

Without any real analysis of cause, responsibility or solutions, the documentary merely left us with a "what is the world coming to?" attitude.

At least it was token acknowledgment that there are serious matters going on in the worlds outside the West's self-obsessions. Straight after, however, it was back to trivia with Body Hits, a dumbed-down version of a Robert Winston documentary series about the workings of the human body.

The series is from BBC3, which makes programmes for 20-30 year-olds. Did you know that schools and other public places are for spreading infections such as cold and flus? In other episodes Body Hits has divulged illuminating "facts", such as heavy drinking is followed by a hangover, and love is a chemical reaction. As this is a show for the very slow, the facts are often accompanied by simple diagrams.

Still, it all serves to make Himalaya with Michael Palin look that much better.

Palin manages to walk a fine line between good manners and scepticism. On his visit to Tibetan astrologer, he learned he was an elephant in a former life. This allowed him to quiz the Dalai Lama: "How does an elephant get to be a TV presenter?"

Not the kind of question the God King is used to fielding. In turn he gave Palin some unexpected inside gen on the timing of his bowel movements. With moments like these, you can see why Palin has no need to vary the formula of his travels.

The well-seasoned telly traveller's journey along the world's highest mountain range not only revels in the exotic sights and the human interest along the way, but also manages — effortlessly — to be informative.

Palin's stopover in the troubled Indian state of Kashmir, for example, came with a succinct explanation of the source of its conflict. Footage of a bombed-out building underlined the uneasiness which permeates the state's stunning natural beauty.

This telly travel programme is not only an eye on parts of the world too often reduced to emotive headlines of terror and outrage. Palin's also a chief protector of the endangered art of the telling cameo.