Television Reviews : Clash of Cultures, Personalities in ‘Face to Face’

She’s combative. He’s roguish. She’s a paleontologist, digging for the world’s oldest human fossil. He’s a miner, digging for meerschaum. They clash over the same digging site. Even Africa isn’t big enough for both of them.

There’s a romance here somewhere and Elizabeth Montgomery and Robert Foxworth finally find it after squabbling the first hour in Hallmark Hall of Fame’s “Face to Face” (tonight at 9 on Channels 2 and 8).

Director Lou Antonio, who has a bit part in the movie, does a workmanlike job with a pedestrian script by John Sweet (from a story by Edward Pomerantz) that occasionally comes alive with barbed dialogue and scenes featuring real Masai warriors.

The major interest is the location, the high country in northern Kenya. Another nice element is the frequent use of Swahili by the stars themselves and the unpatronizing view of the Masai natives.

More compelling actually than the Montgomery-Foxworth relationship is a subplot centering on a troubled, disaffected Masai youth (Kenyan actor Richard Ngatia) who struggles to come to terms with his culture in a showdown with a lion that is ravaging the villagers’ cattle.

If this sounds like a National Geographic special, the production is thankfully not that sober. But this is certainly an undemanding show that asks for more patience than the drama can accommodate.

Montgomery and Foxworth are zestful, and Montgomery, as the “prune” Foxworth calls her, is at her most brittle, tossing away snappy lines with abandon. You don’t believe the caustic wit out there in the bush, but it enlivens the search for a 3-million-year-old skull. “Oh, I love New York,” she chortles upon arrival in Kenya. “Where else can you see all the best British plays?”