TV REVIEWS : ‘Cry in the Wild’ Explores the Love of an Outcast

Awfulness is an important genre in the TV universe. People like seeing people doing awful things to people. Hence, “Cry in the Wild: The Taking of Peggy Ann,” airing at 9 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39.

It’s based on the brutal abduction of 17-year-old Peggy Ann Bradnick in 1966 in rural Shade Gap, Pa., by a reclusive kill-crazy nicknamed Bicycle Pete. He dragged her through the thick backwoods for eight days with 2,000 men and dogs on their twisted trail.

This version of events, contrived by executive producers Len Hill and Ron Gilbert, director Charles Correll and writer Durrell Royce Crays, isn’t what it sounds like--which is a monster mountain man kidnapping a young girl for his sex slave. This is instead a study of a hopeless, hapless, pitifully rejected outcast of society who grabs desperately for love in his own brutal confusion. He has tracked Peggy Ann from afar and decides he loves her, whatever love may mean to him.

It is not appropriate to cheer for Pete--but we can grieve for him when it’s all done. We understand the depths of his alienation and his torment by virtue of a quite powerful portrayal by a virtually unrecognizable David Morse. Peggy Ann is played by Megan Follows in a strong, carefully crafted performance.