TV REVIEW : ‘Remember’ Rises Above Genre

Characters coping with life-threatening illnesses have become such a dreary staple of the TV movie that disease-of-the-week dramas need unusual elements to succeed.

“When You Remember Me” (Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) works because, on a level of trench warfare, the conflict is between a young boy (Fred Savage) and a monstrous nurse (Ellen Burstyn) who are nothing less than versions of the hero and anti-hero in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

The time is the early ‘70s, and the teleplay, by Jerry McNeeley and Cynthia Whitcomb, is loosely inspired by the events in the life of a real boy, Michael Patrick Smith. Stricken with terminal muscular dystrophy, he legally took on a state nursing home system, its abuses and tyranny over the weak, and triumphed.

It’s impossible to tell which incidents in the show are fictionalized, but the writers and director Harry Winer unabashedly pull at gut-and-heart strings until you’re cheering for these rebellious, disabled adolescents and hissing at Big Sister and Big Brother.

The steely Burstyn, clapping her hands for order, looking metallic under her wire-rimmed glasses and upswept hairstyle, is chilling. It’s a beautifully coiled performance. And the shocked but resilient Savage makes you forget “The Wonder Years.”

Most unusual, and convincingly pulled off, is a scene where the sensitive Savage muses with a young nurse about the poetry of Keats and Shelley. It’s rather amazing to hear this literary dialogue. What a bountiful lift! You can probably credit the producers (David L. Wolper and Bernard Sofronski) for allowing it to stand.