TV REVIEW : ‘City’ Pares Away Skin of Big Apple

In its season premiere, “Nova,” PBS’ consistently fine science series, goes underground for an entertaining look at “The Hidden City.”

Airing at 8 tonight on Channels 28 and 15, and at 9 on Channel 50, “Hidden City” continues “Nova’s” tradition of rendering the bulky and complex into a clean, coherent and remarkably engrossing mix, in this case tackling New York City’s enormous urban infrastructure--the systems that deliver water and power and take away sewage and garbage from the Big Apple.

Bulky? Complex? Any one of these subjects merits its own full-length documentary, yet producer-writer Carl Charlson covers each well within 12 to 15 minutes. Structured around narrator Judd Hirsch making a cup of coffee--each step of the process involves another system, water for the coffee, power for the coffee maker and so on--excellent graphics, tight editing and short, to-the-point interviews open the door to the city’s underpinnings.

The amount of work required to service a metropolis the size of New York is staggering: Beneath the streets are 80,000 miles of electrical cable and enough water mains to reach China; enough sewage daily to fill Yankee Stadium 10 times; enough garbage each month to fill the Empire State Building. “Hidden City” offers a look at a world that is only noticed when something goes wrong, like the Big Blackout of 1977 or the garbage strike of 1968, a 17-day crisis that gave New Yorkers something besides subways to gripe about.

There is very little moralizing in “Hidden City.” Points about waste disposal, clean water, nuclear power plants, lack of landfill space and recycling are gently made, usually visually but also in the near-perfect narration by Hirsch.