Under Review

• ED (SPEEDO) JAGER knows he'll never be a NASCAR driver, but if he can take his lovingly tended, souped-up old wrecks and "go out and blow people away" on the national demolition derby circuit, he'll still feel like a champion. In Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story (PBS, Aug. 24), Jager says his passion is "like nitro-methane through your veins." Speedo is not only a lively, smash-'em-up tale of Jager's love affair with his cars, which he subjects to untold abuse, but also an affecting portrait of a 41-year-old auto mechanic with a weathered face and grease-embedded nails who smokes cigarettes and guzzles Mountain Dew while chasing his dream. But Speedo also shows a softer side of its subject. While his marriage is falling apart, Jager, who has two sons, meets "a lady friend" who shares his passion for derbies. Liz loves him, he says, quietly astonished at his good fortune, and is "a one-woman pit crew." What more could a guy possibly ask for? --Nancy Ramsey