‘World’ Shrinks the Global Village

The modern era of backpack journalism gets a sterling showcase with the pilot episode of “Frontline/World,” which takes viewers well off the beaten path for stories that nevertheless resonate strongly across our global village.

The series, airing tonight at 8 on KCET and at 10 on KVCR, will return with weekly editions in the fall.

The new series veers from “Front- line’s” single-topic format with a newsmagazine approach emphasizing shorter pieces. Tonight the focus is on three stories: tracking the shipment of huge caches of illegal weapons from Eastern Europe to war-torn Sierra Leone; a look at the suicide-bomber capital of the world in Sri Lanka; and an eye-opening look at changes the introduction of satellite TV has brought to the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

Nestled between China and India, Bhutan is a tiny country of fewer than a million people that had managed to sequester itself from much of the outside world for centuries. But once the TV cables began unfurling, that isolation went with it. Family members now talk of rushing home from school or work to watch Cartoon Network or professional wrestling--this in a region with more monks than soldiers, where traffic lights and fast-food chains were unknown.

One can only wonder how the Bhutanese reacted to the birth of Rachel’s baby on “Friends.”