TV REVIEW : ‘Les Miz’ a Promo in Documentary Form on Channel 28

Television audiences certainly don’t need the creators of a smash musical to chortle about how “entertaining, exciting and moving” their show is. But that’s what happens on the documentary, really a promo, “Les Miserables: Stage by Stage” at 9:40 Sunday on KCET Channel 28.

You may look at creative people patting their own backs as either innocent or self-serving, but why make a film about it? Because “Les Miz” is wildly popular and because somebody two years ago shot four opening nights in Europe, complete with stirring on-stage battlements and off-stage glitz. It’s an impossible score to hum but, no mean feat in the few minutes alloted to the plot, Victor Hugo’s epic occasionally lurches to life in the manner of a good trailer.

Now to business, which the show’s executive producer and writer, Martin Cox, mercifully does not indulge: The musical opera’s net profits from four U.S. companies place it third on the all-time national list, behind “Cats” and “Chorus Line.” Before it closed last summer, “Les Miz” ran 61 weeks at the Shubert, where it drew nearly 800,000 patrons and turned a $3.5-million profit. It’s still performing in 13 cities worldwide.

Jumbo hit movies get canned massaging all the time on TV, so it’s nice to see theater, outside the Tonys, bridge the hype-gap for a harmless change. Too bad there’s no third party objectively querying the creators. But at least director Paul Henry, in the show’s freshest moment, catches the horror among the cast and investors when the London critics, both the posh papers and the tabs, crucified the show the morning after it opened at the Barbican Centre in 1988. It went on to win eight Tonys.

The program caps an eight-hour Broadway musical celebration on KCET. The tune-filled day begins with a repeat of last year’s PBS “Show Boat” at 2:30 p.m. and follows with musical bouquets to Alan Jay Lerner at 6 p.m. and Richard Rodgers at 8 p.m., before the valentine to the loaf thief Valjean and company.