Source : Globe & Mail

What if CBC had a makeover and nobody cared? What if the CBC makeover amounted to a poor imitation of the BBC World look and some ding-dong noises to herald the news?

On Monday, CBC-TV and Newsworld went all giddy with the new CBC look. At times, it was all quite wobbly. An unfortunate woman from the World Health Organization was left on-screen, staring dolefully at the camera waiting for somebody to say hello from Canada.

In truth, the makeover was much less than expected. The mistakes -- too much clutter in the screen and too many people on the air, with one introducing the news on Newsworld and the other actually handling the news -- stayed the same.

What if the makeover thingamajigs we saw on the screen were not the real point? What if the real, continuing makeover involves more stories about people and their problems and less about politicians? Yeah, that's it.

So, what if the current outbreak of avian flu in Turkey was just the start of a major, worldwide health crisis? You see, if the H5N1 strain of avian flu gains the ability to spread easily between people, it could trigger a pandemic. What if that happens?

The fifth estate (CBC, 9 p.m.) is so all over the "what if?" scenario. The most peculiar fifth estate program in years, it's a docudrama. There's a whole lot of acting, speculative scenarios and fakery. The point is to present Canadians with a terrifying picture of what will happen if the avian flu scare turns into a pandemic. In case you don't get it, the program is called Black Dawn: The Next Pandemic.

As far as I know, this is a new style for the fifth estate. It may well be part of the CBC makeover -- a program that attempts to dramatize the situation of real people in a real scenario, rather than have experts yakking away about the potential problems to be faced by people. If so, it's an interesting experiment, but it's weirder than it is wonderfully effective television. At times, it's irritatingly obvious and manic in its insistence that we should all run for our lives. Now.

That said, it is a truly terrifying scenario presented to us. It is meant to shake us all out of our smug complacency, and it sure does.

Black Dawn begins in present-day Toronto. A family is watching TV. On Royal Canadian Air Farce there's a joke about the fear of the avian flu. Immediately, we're told that it isn't funny. A good part of the program is faux home footage of a family. The mother, Jane, works in a hospital, and her son Hugh, who is wielding the camera, doesn't seem to take anything seriously. When he makes a wisecrack to his little sister Erika about turning into chicken, he's admonished.

We return to Hugh, Jane and Erika quite often, after we've heard from real experts talking about the pandemic scenario. Also, we get a lot of fake news reports set at a time when the avian flu is about to hit Canada or has already arrived.

Thus, experts tell us about the shortage of drugs to handle the flu and then we get one of those fake news reports about thieves robbing the drugs from pharmacies across Canada. Soon enough, in this scenario, Canada is on the point of collapse. A lot of people have fled the major cities. The real experts say this probably won't save them. The cities' streets are empty. Major manufacturing companies shut down. Travel between countries is restricted. In some countries, the school system has been shut down. The world's economy is on the brink of collapse.

How authentic is this speculative picture and the dramatizations presented to us? Well, among the real experts who appear in the program, one says: "All of the services, as we know them, are likely to collapse." Another says, "Society as we know it will rapidly grind to a halt."

Okay, we get it. CBC says the fifth estate program is "a starkly realistic picture of life during the next pandemic." That's impossible to verify, of course. Right now, the "stark picture" and its presentation look sensationalist.

Mind you, this fifth estate will air just as more reports come from Turkey about the avian flu situation there. That gives it added relevancy and dramatic oomph.

What if it is merely sensationalist? I don't know. We can all only hope that it is.

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