The new series “Movies That Shook the World” (9 p.m., AMC) looks at popular films that touched a nerve with the general public and generated debate, controversy and conversation in ways that transcended mere entertainment. The series kicks off with the 1987 thriller “Fatal Attraction.”

Although the 1980s have been dismissed as a rather bland time of shoulder pads and Debbie Gibson records, the discussion of “Fatal Attraction” reminds us of the era’s tense sexual politics and the ongoing debate about a woman’s place in the home, in the boardroom and in the bedroom. Stars Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, producer Sherry Lansing and director Adrian Lyne all recall a film that begins with a casual affair but ends, as one observer describes it, “like a Hitchcock movie on crack.”

The fact that Close’s character, a single, professional and sexually aggressive woman, was depicted as a bunny-boiling psychopath annoyed many feminists, as well as women who were merely trying to juggle work, marriage and family life. Married men and women nervously joked about the film as a cautionary tale. Others felt that its blunt message – that sex equaled danger and death – had become a brutal metaphor for AIDS, then killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Future “Movies That Shook the World” segments will discuss “Birth of a Nation,” “Do the Right Thing,” “The China Syndrome,” “The Graduate” “American Graffiti,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “The Exorcist” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Food fads and youth obesity are the topic of “That’s So Raven” (6:30 p.m., Disney).

¢ A multi-network fundraiser for victims of Hurricane Katrina on “Shelter from the Storm: A Concert for the Gulf Coast” (7 p.m., CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, WB, UPN and TBS).

¢ Poppy Montgomery and Mark McGrath are host to “Fashion Rocks” (8 p.m., CBS).

¢ Scheduled on “Dateline” (8 p.m., NBC): The Rolling Stones; the mystery of “the piano man.”

¢ Murder comes between a group of old friends on the pilot episode of the new drama “Reunion” (8 p.m., Fox).

¢ A “Tom Brokaw Reports” (9 p.m., NBC) takes a rather anecdotal look at the power of Evangelical Christians in American politics and society.