Television Review : ‘To My Daughter’s’ Soap Opera Plot Has Some Fine Shadings

TV is always looking to engage our emotions, whether it’s with earthquakes in Los Angeles, murders in Texas or interesting diseases. Or, on a smaller scale of human aggravation, pains in the family.

The angle in “To My Daughter,” airing at 9 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39, is that Laura (Rue McClanahan) so anguishes through the death of cherished daughter Julie (Michele Greene) that she alienates her two other children. They rebel.

Julie, a TV writer who dreams of writing a book on the Hollywood Blacklist, has an especially tight relationship with her mother; when she dies at 28 of a brain tumor, Laura sets out hellbent to finish the book.

Seems like simple soap opera, with a lot of weeping and wailing. Which it is. But executive producer William A. Schwartz has written an involving script, complete with not-so-easy answers to very uneasy questions, and director Larry Shaw has elicited fine performances, primarily from McClanahan, who delivers shadings of strength and uncertainty.

Likewise, there are affecting moments from Greene; Tom Irwin as Julie’s boyfriend; Samantha Mathis, who made such a strong impression in the recent feature film “Pump Up the Volume,” as the younger daughter, and Ty Miller from “The Young Riders” as the angry son.

Ironic footnote: Veteran actor and acting coach Jeff Corey plays a minor role as a blacklisted writer. In 1951, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee and didn’t act again for 10 years.

KTLA’s ‘Night of the Fox’ Miniseries Is Really a Dog

On the printed page, Jack Higgins’ “Night of the Fox” is a snappy suspense spy adventure from good old WWII. Lot of twisted logic but nifty reading for a long, long trip.

In the fiercely literal form of the TV miniseries--airing on KTLA Channel 5 tonight and Tuesday at 8 p.m.--it’s not as nifty.

Much of this contradiction is in the goofy plotting--which reads like wild imagination but plays silly: An American colonel is missing in a raid and daredevil British agent Harry Martineau is sent after him on the Nazi-held island of Jersey--lest the Germans snare him and torture him for D-day secrets. Meantime, German Field Marshal Rommel hires an Army corporal who used to be a cabaret actor (who’s also Jewish) to impersonate him, so he can get on with planning Hitler’s assassination. He sends the corporal to Jersey on an inspection tour.

Much more of a problem is the acting.

Harry, described as “a scholar, philosopher, poet, full of sweet reason--and a cold ruthless killer,” is portrayed with nonchalance by George Peppard--like just another romp with “The A-Team.”

Then there’s Harry’s undercover girlfriend, played by Deborah Raffin (real-life wife of executive producer Michael Viner). Her all-American nice looks and pleasant manners don’t extend to her double assignment as a saucy British nurse who in turn plays a wily French tart. Likewise, the English accent avoids her.

David Birney has nothing much to do but look wounded as the American. Michael York is the fun of the four hours, finding depth, style, even humor in his Rommel.

Charles Jarrott directed with heavy hand. The show stumbles and drags along--longer, it might seem, than the war itself.