China from the Inside, a new miniseries, starts today on many PBS stations. It’s a joint production from KQED (San Francisco’s PBS station) and Granada Television (Britain) and consists of four one-hour episodes. Reviews are glowing and emphasize that this is not a run-of-the-mill documentary on the Great Wall, Forbidden City, name any other Chinese tourist destination. The series doesn’t shy away from the tough issues facing China today: the environment, government corruption, religious freedom, suicide among women (China is unfortunately unique in being the only country where the female suicide rate is higher than that of males). British director Jonathan Lewis was up front with the Chinese government about the subject matter he filmed but was given surprisingly free access to sites and citizens. The crew was assigned minders who sometimes made themselves conveniently scarce. We know China can’t be ignored and perhaps China is realizing it can’t ignore itself either. (SF Chronicle review, Seattle Times review)