Mumbai Terror Attack Spawns HBO, PBS Docs

Television has an odd preoccupation with commemorating anniversaries, so that horrific events are now revisited with the same annual frequency as holiday specials and parades.

Discovery, for example, has another pair of JFK assassination specs lined up for Nov. 22 -- the 46th anniversary -- just as each Sept. 11 brings a new wave of fresh and not-so-fresh memorials.

November also marks the one-year anniversary of the terror attacks in Mumbai, which has spawned a pair of specials this month: HBO's "Terror in Mumbai," which airs Nov. 19; and PBS's "Secrets of the Dead: Mumbai Massacre," on Nov. 25.

Both run an hour, but the HBO spec is by far the superior of the two. The pay channel's account is both harrowing and enlightening, using video and intercepted cellphone calls to recreate much of what transpired, and featuring an interview with the surviving gunman.

In the calls, you hear the terror plotters coaxing their flunkies to murder innocents, even as the young men carrying out these violent acts marvel at the opulence of the hotels they're occupying. As Newsweek columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria notes in narrating the program, the ruthlessness that's displayed can easily obscure the complexity of the problem, beginning with what motivates an enemy to execute suicide missions in the name of their "cause."

That sense of alienation -- and the exploitation of it in an effort to justify mass murder -- seems especially timely as pundits sift through the evidence in the military base killings in Fort Hood, Tex., ascertaining to what extent religious extremism motivated accused killer Nidal Malik Hasan.

Directed by Dan Reed (who also did the earlier "Terror in Moscow"), HBO's "Mumbai" doc is an unflinching and depressing look at what transpired. Nevertheless, "Terror in Mumbai" largely achieves its objective -- putting a face on the perpetrators as well as their victims. Neither of these projects is a picnic to watch, but if you only have the stomach for one hour devoted to these grisly events, HBO's is definitely the one.