HALLMARK HALL OF FAME: O PIONEERS! (CBS, 9-11 p.m.) After its surprising ratings success with last year's beautifully done Sarah, Plain and Tall, Hallmark Hall of Fame has mounted an elaborate TV version of Willa Cather's 1913 novel about Nebraska farm settlers. Jessica Lange stars as Alexandra Bergson, the daughter of Swed-ish immigrant parents who becomes the wise, heroic matriarch of a vast homestead, but who spends most of her life denying her passionate love for her neighbor, Carl Linstrum (Molly Dodd's David Strathairn).
Director Glenn Jordan has attempted the same combination of scenic beauty and emotional storytelling he achieved in Sarah, Plain and Tall, but this time his material works against him. Cather's sturdy stories are filled with revelatory descriptions of the countryside and the lives of women in her era, but the novelist certainly wasn't interested in the sort of snappy, naturalistic dialogue and plotting that a two-hour TV movie demands. Cather described Alexandra as "slow, truthful, steadfast without the least spark of cleverness," but Lange plays her haughty and dour. Lange's acting says to us: "Gaze at what a real, serious actress can do on television." Yeah- bore us silly. Granted, it's hard to deliver a line like "We come and go, but the land is always here, and the people who love and understand it are the people who own it for a little while" without sounding pompous, but still, I'd have given a lot to see Roseanne Arnold pop up in period costume to tell Lange to snap out of it and get real. C
JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS: THE BRUCE CURTIS STORY (NBC, 9-11 p.m.) Here's an unexpected pleasure: This Canadian-made TV movie, based on a real-life crime and its aftermath, features no big names but hits hard. It's about Bruce Curtis (Simon Reynolds), a smart, quiet, slightly moony student in a Nova Scotia boarding school, and the odd-couple friendship this teenager struck up with an obstreperous classmate, Scott Franz (Jaimz Woolvett). In 1982, Scott brought Bruce to his New Jersey home for a holiday weekend; before it was over, Scott's mother and stepfather were shot dead. Journey Into Darkness is an account of the young men's arrests and separate trials. The movie, working from a script by Keith Ross Leckie, suggests that Bruce was innocent but destined for conviction when the prosecution introduced pages from his diary into evidence. These entries were filled with adolescent angst and overwrought fantasies-"I was trying to be like Kafka," says the owlish Bruce in his trial testimony-and the movie's implication is that the jury didn't understand the difference between a young intellectual's daydreams and a confession of guilt. Journey Into Darkness conveys a novel message: If people were better educated, our justice system might work more efficiently. A-
3 MONDAY
THE BROKEN CORD (ABC, 9-11 p.m.) Although Michael Dorris' 1989 book about his adopted son's battle with fetal alcohol syndrome has been turned into a TV- movie tearjerker, The Broken Cord is a tearjerker with real emotional power behind it. Jimmy Smits stars as Dorris-he's called David Norwell in Cord-a writer and teacher who, while still single, adopted a son, here called Adam, played at different ages by three excellent young actors-Frederick Leader- Charge, Michael Spears, and Frank Burning. The movie follows Norwell's growing realization that Adam isn't just learning-impaired, as was first diagnosed. Talking to various doctors, he learns that the heavy drinking Adam's mother did while pregnant caused irreparable brain damage in the child. The Broken Cord has a lot of medical information to get across, as well as sketchily drawn depictions of Norwell's romantic life, culminating in his marriage to a novelist-poet (Louise Erdrich in real life) portrayed by Kim Delaney. Despite its overstuffed, occasion-ally melodramatic quality, Cord contains a beautifully low-key yet urgent performance by Smits; and director Ken Olin, former star of thirtysomething, does a terrific job of conveying the close, complex relationship between this father and son. Adam (Rey-nold Abel in real life) died last year, only 23 years old, hit by a car; flawed as it is, TV's The Broken Cord is a heartfelt testament to his life. B+
