In a departure from the usual Middle Eastern diet of tabbouleh, rampaging mobs, and suicide bombs, tonight PBS presents “Dishing Democracy,” a one-hour edition of the globetrotting documentary series “Wide Angle.”

The program’s subject is “Kalam Nawaem” (Sweet Talk), an Arabic talk show modeled on ABC’s “The View,” only with prettier hosts and more stylish sets. The show is carried on the privately owned Arab satellite channel MBC, whose motto is charmingly upbeat, “We See Hope Everywhere.” If our own media had to serve up a motto in reply, I think it would be, “Really? We See Only Despair.”

But then, the last few years have been hard on American morale. It was once believed that the presence of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers might transform the Arab world, but PBS’s press release hints that they arrived too late, and with the wrong mission. “While the United States has been striving to promote democracy in the Arab world, a homegrown revolution is already taking place. Every Sunday night in living rooms throughout the Middle East, tens of millions of viewers are tuning in to a fearless all-female talk show whose four hosts discuss controversial subjects, shatter stereotypes, and provoke debate.”

The four hosts of “Kalam Nawaem” are certainly willing to tackle subjects head-on. “The subject of this show is masturbation,” announces Fawzia Salama, introducing a particularly controversial edition of the program. A woman calling in anonymously admits that she began masturbating when she was 15. “Nobody taught me how to do it, my body asked for it,” she says with a touch of lyricism.

“When we talked about, excuse me, the female masturbation,” says the show’s male producer, “Oh, my God! We made a big, big split in the media. But at the end, simply it was a success. When you make a controversy, this is the true success. And life is a controversy, it is a duality.”

The presenters of “Kalam Nawaem” are united by their willingness to discuss hot-button topics (sexual equality, homosexuality — “a super-taboo” — wife-beating, sexual abuse, infidelity, and child sex education, to name a few). They also share a certain rootlessness. The striking Palestinian actress Farah Bseiso was born in the Gaza Strip but grew up in Syria and Kuwait. Ms. Salama, the oldest of the bunch (she looks about 60), is an Egyptian journalist based in London. Rania Barghout is a Lebanese who once lived in London, now lives in Beirut, and is considering a return to London. Lastly there’s Muna AbuSulayman, a divorced Saudi from a prominent religious family. Ms. AbuSulayman is the only host to wear the hijab, and the only one who could be called a conservative.

“Dishing Democracy” shows the women’s lives off-air as well as on, but the background is often more revealing than the foreground. When Ms. AbuSulayman visits a Saudi shopping mall, you don’t learn much about her, but you do get a pretty good sense of the eeriness of Saudi shopping malls: The men in white gowns with red-and-white headdresses, the women like floating black pillars. Only their heavily made-up eyes are visible, and they’re the busiest, most flirtatious eyes you’ll ever see.

My favorite moment in “Dishing Democracy” comes when the Dutch director, Bregtje van der Haak, cuts away from the television studio to gauge the reaction in a Cairo café, where an unshaven, unemployed, all-male ensemble is sitting around sucking on water pipes and occasionally glancing at the TV. An episode of “Kalam Nawaem” is on, and it’s about sex education. “We’re uptight because we try to hide from children what’s natural,” says Ms. Salama, who probably imported the idea from London. The men in the café are unimpressed by the sex talk: “That’s not okay, we’re Muslims,” says one, a T-shirt-worthy line in the tradition of “No Sex Please, We’re British.”

Another man in the café — mustachioed, quite young, looking distinctly peeved — isn’t taking the bait either. “They want to tell us what to think,” he says indignantly, referring to the women on the show, “and now they’re getting satellite TV to tell us about it. You know what? Next, they’ll teach it in primary schools.”

My dear sir, I’m afraid you’re right. These media boors, with their grotesque salaries and inflatable smiles, have ideas, opinions, theories about how you should live, and they broadcast them all day long! It’s just the way it is. As for sex education in primary schools, you don’t know the half of it: Try kindergarten.

“Dishing Democracy” provokes mixed feelings. Of course you side with the four women encouraging greater openness in the Arab world. On the other hand, you also pray they don’t end up replicating every dumb bit of therapy-speak we’ve ever come up with.

* * *

Whoever appointed Tony Blair special envoy to the Middle East made a tragic error. The man for thejob, obviously, is Derren Brown, star of the jaw-dropping new television series “Mind Control with Derren Brown.” (The second episode shows Thursday on SCI-FI.) Mr. Brown, who is 36, British, and vaguely satanic and secret agentish, claims to have no paranormal abilities. Rather he works with “suggestion, psychology, misdirection, and showmanship.”

However he does it, the ease with which he persuades complete strangers to behave exactly as he wants them to — getting them to hand over valuable personal items (as in, “Would you mind giving me that gold Rolex on your wrist? Thanks so much. Goodbye.”); accept blank pieces of paper in lieu of dollar bills; and stop dead in their tracks on the street without knowing why — suggests that this is the man to sort out the problems in Iraq. He might also convince Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that, sans Israel, life would be simply insupportable, and persuade the Saudis to get with the program and allow women to drive and go outside without the burka and show some leg — provided they don’t start covering them with tattoos.

If anyone can figure out exactly how many nukes Mr. Ahmadinejad has up his sleeve, surely it’s Mr. Brown, whose mind-reading abilities are nothing short of miraculous. (He seems to be able to guess, to the nearest dollar, the exact amount of money people have in their wallets. Why not the same with silos?) In an upcoming program, he even convinces someone the sun has disappeared, vanished, gone forever. Surely he could work his voodoo on the Sunnis and Shiites (“You love each other, you love the Americans, you are all going to be very happy together”).

There’s only one problem: He doesn’t speak Arabic. But he’s a speed-reader, and he can memorize entire phone books. Couldn’t he blitz through a Berlitz course and then brainwash the whole region?

Also, Derren — just a personal request — could you help me quit smoking? Thanks. In fact, could you take care of that before leaving for Iraq? Really? You’re doing it already? You’re right, I can feel it working. I hate cigarettes. I can’t believe I ever smoked them. But wait — what happened to the sun?

bbernhard@nysun.com