TV Reviews : From Canada, ‘Love and Hate’ Based on a True Story

As if we hadn’t enough renditions of grisly crimes on our own TV, NBC has brought one in from Canada. Why is it that we’re so fascinated by evil?

Said to be the most popular program on Canadian TV in 1989, the two-part “Love and Hate: A Marriage Made in Hell” is interesting, all right: Its story about an actual child-custody case that escalated to murder provides enough mystery to keep us watching. And the performances are first-rate.

Yet there’s a fundamental unpleasantness about this TV work, airing at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on Channels 4, 36 and 39, that belies its skilled storytelling, able direction by Francis Mankiewicz and generally high production values.

The program starts in 1980, but as we meet Colin and JoAnn Thatcher, it’s obvious that their epic animosity is longstanding and that the cause is the violent, philandering, thoroughly reprehensible Colin, a prominent rancher/politician who has a charming face for the media and his constituents, an ugly one for his wife. The inevitable divorce escalates into the inevitable child-custody war (the Thatchers have three children), twisting toward a single violent act that comes as a jolt despite the drum roll of anger that precedes it.

There are some holes in Suzette Couture’s script, and Colin’s ability to retain his popularity and job as Saskatchewan energy minister as long as he does seems almost incomprehensible. Yet what works here, without question, are Kate Nelligan as JoAnn and especially Kenneth Welsh as the amoral Colin, indelibly stamped as a villain for the ages.

This is simply too grimy and deflating to be a story for the ages, but somehow you keep watching.