Anybody else noticed the astonishing material on Nova and Frontline this past year? Last night’s Frontline was about the siege in Bethlehem, which ended, um, on May 22!

The most compelling show to date in this season of Nova, was, naturally, “Why The Towers Fell“, which was a truly fascinating look at the physics of the 9/11 disaster. The conclusions presented on the show were the early conclusions I recall reading about in February and earlier, but the oomph of visual info made it that much more compelling.

Frontline’s season, however, has been nothing short of fantastic in both timeliness and depth – in particular, the Israeli-based producers the show has been able to hook up with have been providing absolutely remarkable coerage from both sides of the unfolding disaster there – as noted earlier in this post, the production turnarounds for this sort of news documentary has been really amazing.

Highlights for this season have included “Inside the Terror Network“, “Battle for the Holy Land“, and “Terror and Tehran“. I also recall a show which focused on the Kurds and Iraq in very early spring, but don’t know if that was on Frontline.

Additional topics covered include American meat production (the news is, well, bad: the industry is so centralized that outbreaks of regrettable food are pretty much unavaoidable), “American Porn” (hey! How’d I miss that?), and “Dot Con“.

As you have undoubtely figured out, these shows all feature sweet, sweet websites backing them up. The 2001 season also features the same sort of timeliness and topicality.

Anyway, I’m glad it’s on.