Television

My friends across the country swear by This American Life.

One downloads podcasts from National Public Radio (free, updated every Monday) and relies on their company for long walks. Another runs her dogs accompanied by the broadcasts as they air.

Another friend plans to subscribe to Showtime for six weeks just to see the second season of the Ira Glass cult hit.

Admittedly, these friends tread dangerously close to the parody of the show and its audience in the satirical newspaper The Onion, the one with the headline reading, "This American Life Completes Documentation of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence."

The phony quote The Onion attributed to This American Life: "There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme."

OK. The broadcast can be a bit twee [a chiefly British word, meaning affectedly quaint or overly precious], dealing with rarefied topics of interest mainly to highly educated cynics. But the storytelling is great.

When it launched last year, I found the cable version inferior to the radio production. Judge for yourself now that This American Life has returned to Showtime on Sunday nights (rebroadcast Mondays), with more touching, bizarre, funny, sad, humanizing and very literate short stories. The camera adds a dimension, but the aural version has an intimacy even the close-up shots can't touch.

The weekly public radio version of This American Life claims a growing audience of 1.7 million nationally; another 400,000 listeners download it weekly. Those stats aren't something you'd brag about to fans of American Idol, but they're not chopped liver, either.

The six half-hour episodes comprise a few stories grouped around a theme — this season ranging from "Scenes From a Marriage" to "Underdogs" to a medley of portraits of people in various stages and walks of life all over the country, each named "John Smith."

In the opening episode, on the theme of "Escape," the most affecting story concerns a young man in the advanced stages of a degenerative disease as he fights for independence from his mother. This is a rare instance when the camera's gaze gives the words added poignancy. Due to the special circumstances, revealed visually in matter-of-fact footage, the segment may not have been as deeply affecting as a radio saga.

Sure, it can be pretentious. At times, however, This American Life can seem the best, most personal realization of the potential of the medium.

However it affects you, it's nice to know you have the choice of snuggling in bed with the cable show or clocking miles with the broadcasts.

On the tube

What: This American Life
When: Tonight at 7 and 7:30; new episodes on Sundays
Where: Showtime