Radio classic This American Life hits TV

Addiction is a scourge. It digs deep into your flesh and cries for satisfaction without relent. Sometimes, you confront it, dive into its insatiable maw in a heroic act of defiance. It has taken you into the depths, but it cannot keep you there. Usually, however, we are overwhelmed by the weight of it. Grasping blindly for control, we cannot but falter. I have one such addiction. I'm a public radio junkie.On Point. Talk of the Nation. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. A Prairie Home Companion. Baltimore's own Mark Steiner Show. Multitudes more. Public radio is media par excellence thanks to shows like these. But even amid all this excellence, there is one show that truly stands out as a kind of soul for not only public radio, but also the medium as a whole. It perseveres as a genuine representative of "old time" radio. Indeed, it reaches back to a fundamental human practice. It is the oral tradition mastered to a degree that other radio can rarely achieve.This American Life (TAL), hosted by one of the sharpest minds and most dulcet voices in radio, Ira Glass, began humbly in 1995 as Your Radio Playhouse. After a year on the air it had changed its name, won a Peabody Award, and asserted itself as a singular entity in American media. Then as today, TAL strove to do one thing above all: tell good stories.In fact, TAL's stories have consistently been quite a bit more than good. Adjectives like poignant, arresting, witty, nostalgic and wise are probably more suitable. There is no territory in which TAL fails to tread. Episodes have ranged from lit-mag writing-prompt style themes like `Love,' `Obsession,' and `Summer,' to those that, before hearing them brought to life on radio, only play at the edges of understanding: `Before it Had a Name,' `Say Anything,' and one of this year's great delights, `Houses of Ill Repute,' to name a few.It is edited with all the care of finest craftsmanship and incorporates a subliminal soundtrack that carries the listener lightly toward some of the purest entertainment available today. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of TAL is its boundlessness. Whatever theme can compel a story, the show's creators will imagine it.Wherever that story is, they will find it. Apparently the executives at the cable network Showtime felt the same way, and gave Glass and his team the opportunity to film a few episodes for TV. Last week, This American Life premiered on Showtime with many fans wondering just what they would get from what seemed an almost heretical transition.The answer isn't entirely clear as of yet. No doubt, the TV show will evolve and, one can only hope, improve. But the pilot seems to lack something in comparison to its frequency-modulated predecessor, albeit through no fault of the show's creators. In fact, the show deserves high marks for its capacity both to evoke the intimate quality of the radio program as well as strike out on its own. Most distinctly, where TAL is mainly narrative punctuated by documentary, the pilot successfully takes the opposite tack.The difficulties, ones that I trust the creators will tackle, arise in the medium of television itself. There is something about the way in which people behave in front of the camera that lends the barest whiff of the artificial. It is less the nature of the pilot's production that engenders this trace of disingenuousness than the subjects themselves. On TV, even commonplace people appear driven to act.That sense of heightened performance on TAL TV emerges when the interviewees challenge Glass or attempt a bold comment. Part of the appeal of TAL is that it reveals the dramatic events surrounding the lives of seemingly ordinary people, but that is lost when both the events and the people themselves fall into the former category.But while TAL TV has some early kinks, there seems little question that Glass and his crew will overcome them. Television is a medium that has only recently become artistically credible, and the folks at TAL can be counted on to take it in unexpected and worthy directions.