SOLID ‘ROCKET’ IN PBS LAUNCH

Clifford Odets was writing about emotional casualties of the Depression in his 1938 play “Rocket to the Moon,” but a new production on PBS tonight demonstrates that his themes haven’t lost their timeliness. It’s always hard times for somebody.

In telling the story of a 39-year-old New York dentist--aptly named Ben Stark--his wife, secretary and father-in-law, Odets explores the unromantic proposition that while money can’t buy love, neither can love alone buy happiness.

“Love is no solution to life,” one of Stark’s colleagues tells him. “Au contraire . . . you have to bring a whole, balanced, normal life to love if you want to make it go.”

It’s an eloquent production (airing at 8 p.m. on Channel 50, 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15), with John Malkovich, Judy Davis and Eli Wallach heading the first-rate cast under the direction of John Jacobs.