Remote patrol

Have you noticed how every television special on the 20th century looks like all the others? Here we have the most-reported 100 years in history and all the networks can do is rattle off the same familiar-sounding events and personalities rapid-fire - the video version of "We Didn't Start the Fire." Thankfully, there's an exception. "People's Century," which began last summer on PBS, returns for a second series tonight and for the next four nights beginning at 8 p.m. on Channel 19. Told through the accounts of ordinary people, "People's Century" is provocative, often unexpected and refreshingly global in its focus. Tonight, for instance, you'll hear how the postwar boom came to Italy 10 years after it did here. When an Italian woman extols the virtues of her first washing machine, it takes on special poignance. And when an Italian man says, "You could touch heaven with your first Vespa," you believe him. The interview subjects were obviously chosen with great care; they're capable of speaking in complete sentences and even paragraphs. And there's some great old footage here, like California Gov. Ronald Reagan, his head looking like it just came out of a gelatin mold, telling a joke about a hippie who "had a haircut like Tarzan walked like Jane and smelled like Cheetah." After this week "People's Century" airs at 8 p.m. Mondays and concludes July 5.