Introducing the New Vp-tv

Former presidential candidate Al Gore described himself recently as a recovering politician on about step nine of a 12-step programme. Make that step ten.

His new television channel, Current TV, last night flickered into life on Channel 103 of Time Warner Cable.

The channel is aimed at young people between the ages of 18 and 34. It is political he has said, only in the broadest terms. It aims to get young people engaged in the world around them and to democratise television by getting them to submit their own work. Current TV attempts to break new ground.

Instead of programming in conventional 30 minutes or one hour shows, the segments last anywhere from between three minutes and 10 minutes. The programmes are not called programmes at all, but the cringe-inducing "pods". The pieces are shown in differing order throughout the day, designed to appeal to channel-surfing youngsters with attention deficit disorder.

Some of the pods are produced in-house, some commissioned and some submitted by viewers and shown either uncut or in edited form.

Is it any good? The channel is held together by a series of presenters who look as though they might have emerged from an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. They sit on a cement floor with retro crazy paving and a perfectly good blonde wood and white fabric sofa in the background. They dress like Republicans, one thing that doesn't betray the Democratic credentials of the channel's backer.

Some of the programming has come straight from focus groups. The channel offers a little new age eastern spirituality; Deepak Chopra offering his life view to images of sunsets and birds flying in slow motion. The section is called Current Mentors and the presenters invite viewers to nominate people they admire.

In another segment, one of the hired jocks tells us, "what you are about to see is totally touching". A quadriplegic surfer who appeared in the film Step Into Liquid offers some inspirational platitudes - there is little time for him to do anything else. But many pieces did stand out as original and hard to find elsewhere on TV.

One segment was on female students donating eggs to raise cash. In the mini-documentary, girls talked about the physical and emotional process they went through, while the clinic talked about the kind of profile that would-be mothers look for. For a short piece, it managed to raise a broad range of questions: the anonymity of donors, the ethics of genetic engineering and religion.

In another piece cameras followed young people in Iran to a secret underground party where there is alcohol, dancing, scantily clad women and drugs. The young interviewer asked students about taboos - does homosexuality exist in Iran? No, they answered, in astonishment. There were also shorts on the rising levels of suicide in Japan and the latest supermodel from Ghana. A four-parter follows a young pregnant couple.

In another slot a cool-looking girl who has become a pastor in her local church talks about her life. The MTV touch, the background music and camera trickery, leaves it feeling more like a piece from The Real World. She confides that she is a total hip-hop fan and wears deep red lipstick. Another segment betrays Gore's left wing credentials. The Campaign for Human Rights presents an editorial on the problems of young people in prison and the amount that re-offend. This segment is called Current Caring. The under current, forgive the pun, is educating and inspiring young people and as such could potentially turn them off in droves.

In another instance of politics intruding, a "trivia" fact appears on screen asking what industry spends the most on lobbying congress? Answer, the pharmaceutical industry. The heavy-handed touch of a youth marketing agency has also left its fingerprints. As well as the brevity of the segments, there are constant graphics on screen, presenters are shot at oblique angles and their babble is patronizing: "Watching that makes me realise that we're not that much different from the young people in Iran," the presenter piped in after the piece from Tehran.

There are also top ten lists of Google searches - those kids love the internet, right?

The ultimate effect is a well-meaning effort by a middle-aged politician to appeal to young people. But then of course, that is what it is.