Part talk show and part workplace comedy, "Bettendorf Talks” is set in the titular Quad City, hosted by TJ and Dave, a comedy duo of former middling renown. They are trying to use this show as a stepping stone to regain some of their former perceived glory. It’s an unrealistic expectation in a town with no stars, a show with no budget, an inexperienced writing staff, Dave’s ego and TJ’s naiveté.
The band rocks, the local guests are quirky and fun, the director is an absolute boss, the producer is motivated, the announcer might be a murderer, but despite all that going for it, it’s shocking how little can be accomplished when everyone is working as hard as they can in separate directions.
From KQED in San Francisco and the Virus Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, comes a distinguished series of eight half-hour programs on the nature of the virus. Prepared using a National Science Foundation grant, the series is designed to explain to the viewer some of the basic facts about viruses, those structures so essential to life and health, facts which for the most part have only been discovered in the past twenty-five years. Drawing on advanced scientific techniques such as microcinematography, electron microscopy and freeze drying, as well as on animation, large-scale models and drawings, the programs combine lectures with demonstrations to give the viewer an extremely vivid picture of this complicated topic. Particularly emphasized are facts about the virus' relation to bacterial disease, to polio, and to cancer, and new information about viruses which may not yet be generally known to students of biology or to the non-scientific public.