What's On the Box this week?

'Charlie Bird's American Year' (RTE 1, Monday) - In programme two, the RTE US correspondent meets victims of the economic dowturn: newly homeless middle class Americans living in tents, and takes a "foreclosure boat tour" where those who still have money are snapping up holiday homes at half their value. He also travels to Detroit, one of the most depressed cities in America after the massive job losses in the motor industry. It's here that Bird meets Limerick boxer Andy Lee, training for the next world middleweight title under the wing of boxing legend Emanuel Steward. He also heads down to the Mexican border to talk with a vigilante border patrol group known as The Minute Men, and meet the most notorious sheriff in America, Joe Arpaio, a man who detains any apprehended illegal immigrants in a canvas jail. ___________________________________________________________ 'Latin Music USA: East Side Story' (BBC 4, Friday) - Filmed across North America and the Caribbean, and featuring the finest Latin musicians, musical performances and previously unseen archive, this four-part series describes Latin music's profound and deep impact on the musical and social landscape of the US and its promotion of the struggles and achievements of immigrants as they moved from the margins to the mainstream of American society. This first programme examines the massive impact of Santana's innovative Latin blues at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and how this performance helped place Latin music in the mainstream, and leads viewers back in time to the first Cuban immigrants arriving, with their Afro-Cuban music, in the States. ____________________________________________________________ 'The Virtual Revolution' (BBC 2, Saturday) - Twenty years on from the invention of the world wide web, this new series takes stock of its profound impact - how, for better and for worse, the digital revolution is reshaping our lives. Over four themed episodes that criss-cross the globe, journalist and academic Dr Aleks Krotoski explores the meaning of a phenomenon that is transforming everything, from how we learn to how we shop, vote and make friends. With a quarter of the planet connected so far, this series examines what is in store for the remaining 75 per cent of the world's population as they come online. The first episode,'The Great Levelling?', encounters some of the biggest names associated with the web today, including Bill Gates, Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and the inventor of the web himself, Tim Berners-Lee. ____________________________________________________________ 'Scannal: The Ballsbridge Riots' (RTE 1, Monday) - The 18th July 1981 was a beautiful summer's day in the leafy Dublin suburb of Ballsbridge. Yet, within minutes, the sky could no longer be seen with the hail of rocks and ammunition that was raining down on a force of Gardaí surrounding and protecting the British embassy. Scenes reminiscent of the Northern Troubles were becoming a reality for the residents of affluent Dublin 4. Over 100 members of An Garda Síochána were so severely injured, they had to hospitalised - even the chief superintendent in charge suffered injuries that would lead to his early retirement. In the aftermath of the riot, there were accusations and counter-accusations on all sides. Was this a deliberate and organised plot to attack the British embassy and destabilise the Republic, and did the Gardaí lose control of themselves and lash out at everybody in their path in an indiscriminate manner? ____________________________________________________________ Movie Of The Week: 'Darrow' (RTE 1, Saturday) - Kevin Spacey plays the greatest American lawyer of them all. Some people call him 'Lawyer for the Damned'...but Clarence Darrow was a man who, in time of justice, had the courage to stand alone with a name permanently linked to the tremendous strides in the American legal system from the late 19th century through the early decades of the 20th century.