TV Review : ‘Fire’ Grapples With Problems of Old Age

Television doesn’t air many realistic stories about old people, but an affecting one comes along on CBS Sunday night, “Fire in the Dark,” enlivened by a gnarly, bone-brittle performance by Olympia Dukakis (9 p.m. on Channels 2 and 8).

The production sparks uneasy moments of recognition, both for the elderly and for younger people grappling with the care of a near-helpless, aging parent. Smaller things hit home, too, as when Dukakis’ bent old lady struggles up a front porch and a teen-ager shooting hook shots in the driveway looks at her and exclaims in disbelief: “I hope I never get that old.”

But age is the great leveler. And it’s age that prevails here in a very identifiable story of a progressively ailing widow who refuses to move out of her home while her grown children squabble over her destiny.

What salvages the production from melodrama is Dukakis’ fragile, unflinching, 80ish-survivor coping with painful change. Dukakis, who played another old woman similar to this last spring in Robert Anderson’s “The Last Act Is a Solo” on A&E; cable, effortlessly masks her technique. The result is this subtly crumbling, withering figure with a splayed walk and a fierce will.

Lindsay Wagner and Edward Herrmann play the embattled daughter and son, with psychological scars that are deftly exposed in David J. Hill’s script.