"Masterpiece Theatre" ends, but returns as triplicates

There’s no more “Masterpiece Theatre” on PBS, but anglotelephiles, despair not.

There are now three of them: “Masterpiece Mystery,” “Masterpiece Classic” and “Masterpiece Contemporary.”

The august British series, like just about everything else, has been rebranded.

“Contemporary” launches its first season at 9 tonight on KQED with a futuristic, five-part techno-thriller, “The Last Enemy,” a story raising some important privacy issues.

The “Mystery” brand airs during the summer, “Classic" in the winter, “Contemporary” in autumn.

Faced with tightening budgets, ever-increasing cable competition from Discovery, BBC America, National Geographic, History, etc., plus a GOP-dominated Corporation For Public Broadcasting demanding more conservative fare, PBS nevertheless has managed to mount an aggressive schedule this fall. It’s the product of new PBS programming chief John Boland of Sebastopol, who came to the public network from liberal-leaning KQED in San Francisco. The re-branding of “Masterpiece” was one the first moves by Boland, who was recruited to bring PBS into the new digital frontier.

The next Ken Burns magnum opus is coming soon (probably in November), the iconic-sounding six-part, 12-hour series, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” That seems safe enough.

But TV’s most acclaimed — and virtually only — investigative-reporting series, “Frontline,” has a high-profile, politically charged report on the two presidential candidates Oct. 14, “The Choice: 2008.” Producer Michael Kirk has worked on this continuing election series for 20 years.

Another PBS project sure to be closely scrutinized is science series “Nova’s” Nov. 18 installment, “The Bible’s Buried Secrets,” which looks at the development of monotheism among the people who created the Bible, and the Israelites’ ethical code that still resonates today.

And although the words “royals” and "work" may seem antithetical, PBS’s “Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work” on Nov. 12 shows they’re not. (We’ll presumably also find out if all those ribbon-cuttings and polite waving at subjects can cause muscle injuries.)

A darker side of Britain — today and in the near future — is the arena of tonight’s “Masterpiece Contemporary” series opener, “The Last Enemy.”

The enemy in question, explains writer Peter Berry (of “Prime Suspect 6” fame) is ordinary citizens.

If you’ve followed the news lately, you probably know London is festooned with closed-circuit TV cameras monitored by police. Lots of them — one for every 12 people, Berry says in PBS’ press materials for this series.

Is Britain now — or will it soon be — what Berry calls a “surveillance society?” And is this a necessary evil in a time of global terrorism? Those are but two of several big questions posed by “The Last Enemy,” one of the more thought-provoking dramas on TV of late.

As tonight’s story in the near future opens, its central character, a reclusive mathematician named Stephen Ezard (played by the ordinary-looking Benedict Cumberbatch of “Atonement”) is returning to Britain after four years in China on a research project to find the mathematical structure of the universe. Mild-mannered, apolitical Stephen has flown in for the funeral of his brother, an international relief worker killed by a landmine explosion in Afghanistan.

He finds a strange woman, Yasin (played by Anamaria Marinaca) in his apartment. She’s his brother’s widow. The bookish Stephen didn’t know his brother had married.

There’s also a young woman in the bedroom. She’s dying of an exotic disease, and when she does expire, both Yasin and the corpse vanish.

It’s all quite strange, and Stephen looks dazed by it all. He’s “sleepwalking into a surveillance society,” a term becoming common in Britain. His identity card is scanned constantly by police, and in this security-obsessed new world, a rogue agent who lives in an abandoned warehouse is also tracking the mathematician.

Stephen’s old college girlfriend, Eleanor (Eva Birthistle) suddenly appears. She’s now a government minister responsible for getting new security legislation called TIA (Total Information Awareness, a term scriptwriter Berry got from a defunct Pentagon program) through Parliament. On top of all this paranoia-inducing stuff, a security team in the prime minister’s office is also tracking Stephen’s activities, online and off.

With all the spy and whodunit clichés, one might think “The Last Enemy” would collapse under its own weight. But it doesn’t, partly because of all the mysteries raised tonight and the next four Sundays, largely because it poses larger issues about society and the enhanced security technology may bring.

Among them: Is data mining OK if it’s the government doing it? When does the government start targeting individuals (rather than groups) as the enemy? Are universal ID cards, which are being proposed in the U.S. and Britain, a good idea to prevent terrorism?

“You do hear it said that the innocent have nothing to hide,” says Berry, who gives such matters prominence in his teleplay. “But I think we do. It’s called privacy and dignity. If you’re forced to carry an ID card with all your personal information collected by the government, then you’re put into the position of proving you’re innocent every time you use the card.”

Confidence down, ratings up: If you’ve tuned in financial cable network CNBC recently to try to make sense of the shaky financial markets, you’re not alone.

All the troubling economics news has been good business, at least for the NBC-owned network. CNBC recently posted the highest-rated week in its 19-year history. One day during working hours, over 500,000 (mostly anxious) viewers switched to CNBC.

That net has generally done a good job of reporting on — and trying to decipher — the historic crisis on Wall Street for the average viewer.

Bill Mann, a North Bay freelancer, writes a weekly TV column for A&E. Mann talks TV with Steve Jaxxon Tuesdays at 4 p.m. on Santa Rosa’s KSRO (1350 AM). E-mail him at newsmann@mannpublications.org.