TV REVIEW : ‘Killer’: Putting a Face on HIV Statistics

Of the stories told in “48 Hours: The Killer Next Door” (at 10 tonight on CBS, Channels 2 and 8), Joe Batchelor’s is one of the most poignant. The San Clemente man doesn’t have AIDS, but his wife died from it. His two young children are also infected, and he realizes what the outcome probably will be.

As the camera fixes on his weary face, the unemployed construction worker muses that “I may only have 24 months with my son.”

That moment, like many others in the show, makes you ache. There’s no question that “The Killer Next Door” is moving. This is responsible television doing what it does best, namely putting a face on our collective pain and anxiety over this indomitable disease.

But beyond the emotional impact, the episode can be frustrating. Producers Andrew Heyward, Rob Hershman and Linda Martin and their crew of reporters raise profound questions about the future of the crisis but don’t fully explore them. The limitations of this hourlong program are clear--with so much to cover, comprehensiveness is elusive.

“The Killer Next Door” begins with the much-reported knowledge that HIV is spreading among the heterosexual population. It was shot almost exclusively in Orange County--a region that host Dan Rather describes, somewhat simplistically, as quintessential suburbia.

Statistics underline the urgency. Rather notes that, according to federal records, one out of every 250 Americans may be infected with the virus that causes AIDS. As many as 40,000 Americans are expected to die of AIDS this year. About 4,000 new cases of HIV are reported each month. Health officials confirmed the program’s estimate that 12,000 people in Orange County have HIV, and many of them may not know it.

The figures are more than a little frightening, but “The Killer Next Door” doesn’t go much beyond them. It is more interested in the effect AIDS has on people’s lives, and the telling visuals come at you with precision: Kimberly, who has AIDS, breaks down and talks about the guilt of infecting her young daughter. Kirk tells his parents over the telephone that he has the virus while distraught friends listen from the living room. Elizabeth, obviously very sick, gazes abjectly from a hospital bed.

“The Killer Next Door” also touches on the well-publicized controversy in Los Angeles and Orange counties over the distribution of condoms at high schools. While parents and campus administrators fret over what signal that gives adolescents, the camera follows AIDS educator Gary Costa as he tosses out a box of dildos to giggling members of Alpha Chi Omega, a Cal State Fullerton sorority. Costa, explaining that information equals protection, graphically demonstrates the proper way to put on a condom. When asked if this kind of presentation is valuable, the young women suddenly become serious and voice their approval.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” one says, “and that’s the bottom line.”