Moving is not a word often used to describe television shows made here, unless moving your fingers to switch channels can be counted.
But I am sure many will agree with me when I say the moving TV series, Extraordinary People, stands out as one of the finest examples of a home-made show by the Television Corporation of Singapore.
Whatever weaknesses one may pick out in production values, give it this: It has got the basic premise right, that ordinary, everyday people can be extraordinary people.
And that extraordinary people does not mean only famous people, singers, TV stars and celebrities.
Here I want to make what may seem at first glance, a strange contrast: Look how Extraordinary People stands vis-a-vis that other much talked-about show, Gotcha!
The big difference between the two programmes is one of values. One show, Extraordinary People, promotes hope. The other, Gotcha!, breeds cynicism.
At the risk of sounding completely humourless, who would not accept that Gotcha! has often penalised people for being helpful by making fun of them?
It reached the stage where a real-life emergency was created when a woman fainted outside the then Dynasty Hotel in April last year, but this only made people look around for the Gotcha! TV camera.
In the incident, Miss Azizah Abdullah, felt pains in her chest before she broke out in a cold sweat and fell. Doctors said she could have died if she hit her head too hard in a fall or if the blood flow to her brain stopped.
I do not look forward to Gotcha! returning, especially as it was also a blatant waste of the real talents of Moe Alkaff, who should host another show.
If Gotcha! were just a show featuring harmless pranks, I would say to each his own and leave it there. But those with a powerful medium like television in their hands ought to have a better grasp of their role in the social construction of values.
The issue here today is the kind of hurtful cynicism that now runs rampant in society, another form of toxic human waste.
The debilitating, crushing kind of cynicism that begins on the presumption that all people are bad, that if they do something good, it is because they are out to get something in return.
What really produces this kind of heart-numbing cynicism is the culture of materialism we have bred, which makes many people look at the milk of human kindness as if it has curdled.
Remember how the widow of the insurance agent and part-time taxi driver Lim Kheng Wan, who stopped to help a woman change her tyre and was killed by an on-coming car, wept as she said people said mean things about him?
She quoted some friends as saying: "Of course, he help, what. She's a woman. If the person was a man, you think he would stop?"
She added: "I'm disappointed with the way people think. I was married to my husband for 14 years. I know he's not like that. It was just his nature to help others. Some people can't seem to accept that. They say: `Can't be such good people around today.'"
She is right. Many people can't believe it. To do a good thing in Singapore is often perceived as stupid, unless you get something out of it.
When people open their mouth to comment on an act of kindness, too often I hear casual dismissals of every gentle act as a self-serving one.
Of course, to belittle another's act of kindness makes one smart for not committing any oneself.
This kind of cynicism has implications for us all. It affects everyday relations between people, even leadership among kith, kin and nation.
How can you lead if people think you do not have their interests in your heart, or worse, that you are stupid if you do?
Yes, there is a role for cynicism, a healthy cynicism that I would define as being justifiably open-eyed.
In journalism, for example, it is necessary to double-check extraordinary claims with independent sources, that is, people who have no interest in endorsing the claim. This does not happen enough.
When it does happen, as when the claim that the movie, Bugis Street, was invited officially to the prestigious Cannes Film Festival was proven to be otherwise by a simple query to the Cannes officials, we do not begin with the presumption that anyone is lying. We are merely exercising quality control.
If people exercised more such healthy cynicism, the number of conman cases would not have shot up so dramatically even when there is more education and information around.
And I might even believe more of what I read, or see on television, or hear on the radio.
The crushing cynicism I am complaining about is the one which begins on the presumption that people are awful. People with this attitude only cheat themselves out of experiencing little miracles and meeting extraordinary people.
I admit this is a very fine distinction to make. This is one reason why policemen, journalists and other seen-it-all types are sometimes hard to talk to, because many no longer make the distinction between what they see at work and what they can celebrate in life.
With a scriptwriter called Reality, the show, Extraordinary People, helps remind us of that distinction. That not all people are out to get something for themselves. That not all people are bad. That the milk of human kindness is not frozen in a freezer somewhere.