TV Reviews : Angela Lansbury Stars in ‘The Shell Seekers’

Who says there are no good TV roles for women?

Sunday night brings the previously reviewed “No Place Like Home” on CBS and “A Mother’s Courage: The Mary Thomas Story” on NBC, showcases for Christine Lahti and Alfre Woodard, respectively.

And joining them Sunday at 9 p.m. on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42, is Angela Lansbury as a troubled matriarch of a troubled family in “The Shell Seekers,” ABC’s rendition of Rosamunde Pilcher’s successful novel.

Temporarily liberated from her CBS series “Murder, She Wrote,” Lansbury performs nicely, putting in an honest night’s work as Penelope Keeling, a widow seeking to make peace with her past and her children. Two of them, Noel (Christopher Bowen) and Nancy (Anna Carteret), are rather nasty and selfish. The third, Olivia (Patricia Hodge), at least has some integrity and a life with promise.

Set in England and on the Spanish island of Ibiza, “The Shell Seekers” is for viewers who favor beautiful settings over stories that hold your interest because of their plots and execution. This one is obese and blubbering. There’s not much here beyond the gorgeous sights and Lansbury. Her best scenes are with Irene Worth, who plays Penelope’s unpleasant mother-in-law.

It takes a while to sort out the characters in John Pielmeier’s script, which mingles the past with the present. It may be nit-picking, but one thing that doesn’t square is Penelope’s age. A former World War II bride, she is now supposed to be 63, which means she would have been only 14 or 15 when she got married.

Under Waris Hussein’s direction, “The Shell Seekers” proceeds fairly smoothly but is cocooned in unreality and ultimately capped by an unnaturally rosy ending that makes “Rocky” look pessimistic.

Mundane, she wrote.