TV REVIEW : A Very Bland Outing on PBS’ ‘Ask Me Again’

PBS’ “American Playhouse” could hardly present two programs more different than last week’s and this week’s. From the strong, black coffee of “A Raisin in the Sun,” the series moves to the tepid, milky tea of “Ask Me Again” (tonight at 9 on Channels 28 and 15).

“Ask Me” is the blithe chronicle of two very white young people who discover that they really ought to consort with their own class, stick to their own kind.

Elizabeth (Leslie Hope) has resisted the prolonged efforts of her tony Manhattan parents to fix her up with Nelson (Robert Bruce), the son of her parents’ best friends. Elizabeth wants adventure, rebellion, romance; Nelson is a nerd. Nelson’s black sheep of a brother (D. W. Moffett) is more Elizabeth’s type, or so she imagines.

In her 20s, Elizabeth finally declares independence from her parents and takes up with a scruffy radical journalist (Jeffrey Nordling). But her mother (Cynthia Harris) persists in pursuing a match between Elizabeth and Nelson, now an attorney who does pro bono work in prisons. Nelson is as uninterested in Elizabeth as she is in him, but they nevertheless agree to one date, hoping it will relieve the parental pressure.

“Ask Me” offers mild amusement; Harris makes some particularly adept moves as the “piranha” of a mother. But the ending of Richard Greenberg’s script, based on a short story by Laurie Colwin, isn’t very credible. It doesn’t help that Elizabeth isn’t even there when Nelson finally makes up his mind to pursue her.

Nor is the ending as emotionally satisfying as the similar fade-out in the theatrical film “Crossing Delancey,” where the man actually was quite a catch. Despite his professional credentials, Nelson remains the sort of fish that Elizabeth would throw back into the sea.

Deborah Reinisch directed.