After a couple of months of not watching anything on PBS--since "Foyle's War" was broadcast with such [sarcasm alert] sterling quality [end sarcasm alert] by Georgia Public Television (who didn't even have the courtesy to show the last part)--things changed on Sunday. There have been some great programs on this week and at least a couple next week I want to see as well.

Sunday Masterpiece Theatre showed part one of The Lost Prince. This is the story of Prince John, the youngest son of George V, who died in his teens after having lived a childhood apart from that of the usual royal child. John was epileptic and was thought to be mentally retarded. Today we would most likely classify him as an autistic child, and he would probably be a spokesperson for epilepsy or autism, his seizures controlled by drugs. Back then, for rich or poor, it was embarrassing to have a child "not quite 'right'," and "Johnnie" was sequestered most of his life in the family's small country home in the care of his devoted nurse Lalla, defended by his older brother Georgie, to tend his beloved garden. John was eyewitness to pivotal pieces of history, including the outbreak of World War I and the news of the assassination of his favorite cousins, the Romanovs, and the narrative is primarily from his POV. This fascinating story concludes next Sunday.

(While research paints John as the forgotten member of the royal family, I had made his acquaintance years ago, mentioned in Katherine Kurtz's absorbing novel Lammas Night, a cross between a WWII military/spy novel and occult fantasy. One of the main characters in the book is Prince William, who is the fictional twin brother of John. Kurtz paints William as such a realistic character that I had to go pull out a reference on the British royal family to make sure there hadn't been such a person.)

Monday night American Experience, my favorite PBS show, did "The Fight," a piece on the Joe Louis/Max Schmeling bouts. I missed a third of it, but what I did see was an absorbing documentary about the 1930s boxing world and the unfortunate racial prejudice of the time. Last week the AmEx offering had been "Transcontinental Railroad," which not only went into the politics of the effort, but talked about the hardships faced by the workmen, especially the Chinese who faced bigotry and myths about their stamina as well as the weather and the working conditions. Next week's presentation is "The Crash of '29." My mother was twelve when the Depression began, and my dad a few weeks short of his sixteenth birthday, so the period has always fascinated me.

Last night the first part of Broadway: The American Musical aired. The second part is on tonight, the third part on Thursday. This is a fabulous special narrated by Julie Andrews and the first part was filled with the old photographs and silent films I so love and showed Times Square back when it was still Longacre Square and footage of luminaries like George M. Cohan. Interviewees included an actual Ziegfeld Follies girl from the 1920s! There was also a good deal of material about African-American Broadway performers such as the legendary Bert Williams and how they took the stereotypical shuffling blackface character that they were forced to portray and turned him a commentator on the mores of the day. I can't wait to see the rest.

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