To Dream the Possible Dream: New ‘Quixote’ Tale’s Well Told

“What would you say to a great journey?” the impoverished old noble, Alonzo Quixano of the Spanish province of La Mancha, asks his paunchy acquaintance, Sancho Panza.

Soon they are off--fool and junior fool, cartoonish knight-errant on his nag of a horse and simple squire on his donkey--in Miguel de Cervantes’ remarkably durable novel whose spindly old windmill battler is driven to roam the “great elsewhere” as Don Quixote, righting wrongs in the manner of the romantic books of chivalry that fill his shelves.

He’s a wandering knight who does much of his wandering in his twisted, illusionary mind, seeing an inn as a magnificent castle, farmers and their pigs as a great army, a peasant wench as virtuous Dulcinea del Toboso, to whom he dedicates his imagined deeds of valor.

What a nice TNT retelling of “Don Quixote” this is, with John Lithgow a perfectly sized Quixote for all seasons in his rusty armor and cardboard helmet, which he fits to his head so carefully it could be a gleaming crown. And Bob Hoskins’ loyal, ever-befuddled Sancho is an empty boot ready to be filled by his master. While watching them, it helps to hum the score of “Man of La Mancha.”

The middlebrow classics of prolific producer Robert Halmi Sr.’s Hallmark Entertainment continue spreading across prime time like inkblots, with the highly watchable, if lengthy “Don Quixote,” for which Lithgow is also executive producer, becoming his best rendering in some time after a string of mostly stinkers.

John Mortimer’s generally faithful script is directed broadly by Peter Yates, and Lithgow (so memorably over the top in NBC’s “3rd Rock From the Sun”) delivers with a grand flourish that has his Quixote striding like a man on stilts in a lovely Spanish countryside where his pureness of heart is betrayed by his insanity. There are his encounters with the duke and duchess and Knights of the Mirrors and White Moon, of course, and the highly symbolic burning of those chivalric books that Quixote had so voraciously devoured.

Do books alone lead to understanding? That is one question Cervantes seems to be asking en route to making Quixote a tragic figure in a society unable to accommodate this mad idealist’s chaotic brand of gallantry.

*

* “Don Quixote” can be seen Sunday at 8 p.m. on TNT; it repeats at 10:30 p.m. The network has rated it TV-PG-V (may be inappropriate for young children, with an advisory for violence).