Sensational Cities: New York

Narrated by James Woods, and featuring interview clips with Janeane Garofalo, Donald Trump, Joan Rivers, the late Steve Allen, Brian Dennehy and former mayor Ed ("how am I doing?") Koch, this smartly written, nicely lensed history of Washington Irving's "Gotham" takes viewers on a lively 400-year tour of what some have called the greatest social experiment in history. Bought in 1626 for $24 (according to currently discounted legend) by the Dutch from the Native Americans, Nieuw Amsterdam (whose inhabitants were given to "drinking, smoking and various other vices"), suffered their first taste of authoritarian clampdown when peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant (a Matt Dillon type) decided to clean up the outpost, only to promptly hand it over to the invading British in 1664. The newly rechristened "New York" would, of course, undergo another change of hands in the wake of the American Revolution, and even assumed the capital seat of government during the first two years of independence. Before long, with the rise of Wall Street, the influence of five newspapers and the creation of the "big ditch" (Erie Canal), New York had smoothly positioned herself as the financial center of North America. Combining interviews with scholars and archival and contemporary footage of the people and places that have made the Big Apple what it is, the program is chock full of wonderful moments (my favorite is Mayor La Guardia reading the comics over the radio to kids during a strike) chronicling the colorful history of what Ed Koch calls "God's Town." While not the in-depth portrait of Ric Burns' 10-hour epic New York, this two-hour treatment, which originally aired on The Learning Channel, is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)