Television Reviews : NBC Shows the Good and Evil of ‘Twist of Fate’

You know you’re in trouble almost from the beginning of “Twist of Fate” when two German conspirators in the plot to assassinate Hitler openly discuss the plan in a public bar. Why not try it through a megaphone?

The two-part NBC drama airs at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on Channels 4, 36 and 39, squandering a good cast and botching an intriguing plot that merges a Nazi S.S. officer and a Jewish concentration camp survivor in a single character.

In effect, Col. Helmut Von Schraeder (Bruce Greenwood) becomes trapped inside the body of a Reich victim in the waning days of World War II when he persuades a fanatic plastic surgeon (Ian Richardson) to drastically alter his physical appearance and make him look like a Jew, and then to have him shipped to a concentration camp so he can avoid prosecution as a Nazi war criminal.

As Ben Grossman (Ben Cross), he suffers as much as his fellow “Jewish” prisoners, including Max Brodsky (John Glover), the man who will become his best friend and rival for the affections of the lovely Deborah (Veronica Hamel).

Deborah (who apparently has no last name) has spent the war in Palestine, yet is somehow on hand for the liberation of her fiance, Max. But then she gets a load of Ben and--oh boy!

It is Deborah who gets the prize line of the story when she quizzically observes somber Ben, the apparent Holocaust survivor, after he has just been freed from a concentration camp and remarks: “You seem so bitter.” Like, lighten up, guy!

The irony of “Twisted Fate” is Helmut/Ben’s evolution into a celebrated soldier of Israel, where Deborah is radiant in her kibbutz couture and where life for them both is rich and full until events--too farfetched to believe--conspire to strip away his false identity.

The eternal question that director Ian Sharp and writers Bill Bast, Paul Huson and Gy Waldron should have us pondering--how can evil and goodness reside in the same man?--is trivialized by this badly executed story that hinges on too many coincidences and is sometimes downright ridiculous. Too bad.