The concept of that documentary series is so brilliant in its economy and execution, that it should be no surprise that TV producers and filmmakers have made efforts to export it to other parts of the world. This version, filmed in the townships and cities of South Africa, is perhaps the best of the bunch, mainly for understanding at the outset the importance of the multi-cultural world these children are growing up in, as well as being bold enough to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa with a great deal of tact and pathos.

One of the most striking aspects of this documentary is how much more mature some of the young men and women depicted here seem when compared to their English counterparts. This isn't by choice mind you, but rather a necessity of their living situations. Those who have grown up in a hastily thrown together township are forced to grow up fast after dealing firsthand with poverty and the effects of apartheid. Those that shared upper-to-middle class upbringings on the other hand are much less put together, concerned more with instant pleasures than long-term security.

What is unfortunate is how little you really get to know the people in the film. Whether it was a budgetary issue or simply due to decisions on the part of the director, the film seems to skip along the surface, not asking potentially tough questions about how the past ills of apartheid have affected them and informed the people that we see in front of us.

It is the last third of the film that really stays with you, focused as it is on the three people who were involved in the first two installments of this series, all of whom have died from AIDS-related illnesses in the interim. The filmmakers have the daring to show footage from the funeral of one of the children, as well as visiting the grave of yet another. That and the heartbreaking scene when one young man who has by 21 already impregnated two different women says with a smirk that he might get tested someday give the film a punch that the rest of it sometimes lacks.