Duvall’s Powerful Talent Carries ‘Lonesome Dove’

Robert Duvall’s Gus McCrae just may be the most endearing hero ever to ride and shoot his way across a television Western.

With his old friend and former fellow Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call (ably played by Tommy Lee Jones) and a makeshift group of ragtag buckaroos, Gus sets out on a fateful trail drive from Texas to Montana that becomes the dusty heart of “Lonesome Dove,” the unevenly appealing four-part CBS drama airing at 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday on Channels 2 and 8.

Although not adverse to slipping across the Mexican border with Woodrow to steal horses and cattle, Gus is basically decent, and also honest to the point of having no illusions about himself. Additionally, he is as fierce and cunning as they come when it comes to a fight. What separates him from other Western characters, however, is his wry, relentless wit and gentleness--curious traits in a man who has helped rid the frontier of so many of its bad guys.

When outgoing Gus is on the screen, especially in digging, playful patter with the humorless, plain-spoken Woodrow, “Lonesome Dove” is often such a joy that you want to applaud. These aging, bickering partners are a sort of odd couple, embodying the characteristics of a bumpy, but ultimately satisfying marriage.

Duvall, with that support from Jones, puts on an acting clinic in becoming a living, breathing extension of the land and its history. His inspiring performance and some elements of Simon Wincer’s direction and Bill Wittliff’s script give new sweeping dimension to the TV Western while faithfully capturing the spirit of Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on which the miniseries is based.

Unfortunately, that is only a partial verdict.

When Gus isn’t on the screen, “Lonesome Dove” stops--almost on a dime. And sometimes even when he is present, he is merely another helpless appendage to a story whose lethal flaws and cliches are exacerbated by a pace that is often excruciating. Wincer, whose credits range from that very nice theatrical movie “Phar Lap” to the ratty miniseries “Bluegrass,” has a fine feel for the outdoors, but his interior scenes range from soggy to stagnant.

Sunday’s two-hour episode is by far the story’s highlight, as Gus and Woodrow and their small-time outfit gather their resolve and stolen livestock for the great adventure north that will leave behind the modest comforts of Lonesome Dove, a tiny spittoon of a town beside the Rio Grande.

Besides Gus and Woodrow, the eclectic travelers include dashing, but irresponsible Jake Spoon (Robert Urich), whose companion is everyone’s favorite whore, Lorena Wood (Diane Lane). Also along are Woodrow’s son Newt (Ricky Schroder), loyal scout Joshua Deets (Danny Glover) and cowhand Dish Boggett (D.B. Sweeney), who is smitten with Lorena.

The trip will be fraught with Old West justice, perils and appetites. Gus to Lorena: “How about a poke?” Not as in cowpoke.

Almost simultaneously, meanwhile, some of the less believable components of McMurtry’s story begin to surface. An inept sheriff in Arkansas sets off to apprehend Jake for a shooting; the sheriff’s wife runs off; the sheriff’s inept deputy pursues the sheriff to tell him that his wife has run off, and so on and so on.

Moreover, many of the problems that ultimately face the characters of “Lonesome Dove” flow from a pivotal scene for which there is little logic at the start of Episode Two:

With Jake off somewhere playing cards for a few days, Gus and Lorena are alone at Jake’s camp a distance from the herd when they are confronted by a menacing Indian renegade named Blue Duck (Frederic Forrest). After Blue Duck leaves, Gus tells the terrified Lorena that the Indian is a murderer he and Woodrow pursued when they were Texas Rangers. Although Gus urges her to temporarily return to the herd with him for her safety, she inexplicably still insists on waiting alone at the camp for Jake.

Uh oh.

“Lonesome Dove” also boggles in other ways. Although the country is vast, everyone conveniently keeps running into everyone else as if Ogallala, Neb., were Hollywood and Vine. In obnoxious Western tradition, what’s more, the only good Indians in “Lonesome Dove” are dead Indians. Once again, they’re depicted only as faceless marauders who are mowed down while making suicidal frontal charges on outnumbered cowboys. This myth that Indians were too dumb to employ strategy, or that hordes of them wouldly gladly sacrifice themselves just to kill a couple of whites, is the kind of racism and devaluation of Indian life that should be banned from the screen.

Meanwhile, Lane is an appealing Lorena, and Urich does about as well as possible as the poorly defined Jake. Some of the casting is puzzling. As Clara Allen, Gus’ true love in Ogallala, Anjelica Huston is a sort of Prizzi’s Nebraska. Duvall himself publicly complained about the casting of Forrest who, although the epitome of evil as Blue Duck, is surely no Indian, even with that false nose.

And anyone who has seen that wonderful actor Danny Glover in significant roles (including his work on Wednesday night’s “A Raisin in the Sun” on PBS), may wonder what he is doing playing Deets, who is little more than a loyal Tonto.

For all its defects, however, this miniseries is worth some time for the pleasure of experiencing Duvall’s Gus. If only there were more like him in “Lonesome Dove.”

Dern .