One Good Side Effect of the Writers' Strike: Summer TV Documentaries

There aren't many good side effects to the 2007-08 writers' strike, but one is just starting to become evident. A wealth of quality documentaries has been scheduled for summer -- some as ongoing recurring series, others scheduled to help fill the holes caused by a lack of scripted programming...

Tonight at 9 ET, HBO begins a summer-long run of Monday documentaries, including a July documentary on Heidi Fleiss and an August offering called Baghdad High. The series begins tonight with Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, a feature-length study of the infamous director's underage sex scandal, as well as his marriage to actress Sharon Tate, one of the victims of the Charles Manson killings.

The documentary is very interesting, and contains many eye-opening elements, including accounts of misconduct by the judge in Polanski's trial -- but the most obviously missing, and valuable, element is sorely missed. The woman, 13 at the time Polanski gave her champagne and a Quaalude, photographed her in a hot tub and had sex with her, is interviewed anew for this film. But while she says other people weren't there and don't know what really happened, she never says what really happened, or offers her own perspective.

Other documentary series showing up soon include the PBS series P.O.V., the annual summer series returning later this month, and the ABC six-part series Hopkins, the continuation of a prime-time documentary series last shown (as Hopkins 24/7) in 2000. Hopkins begins June 26, and its prominent placement this time around owes a lot to the writers' strike.

So out of every bad comes some good. Unfortunately, out of every bad also comes a lot of worse -- so steel yourself for such summer fare as, sigh, Wipeout and I Survived a Japanese Game Show on ABC, and Wednesday's Celebrity Circus on NBC.