TV Reviews : A Case of Baby Killings in ‘Deadly Medicine’

In a season full of TV movies about victimized women who overcome calamity, “Deadly Medicine” (at 9 tonight on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39) pits heroine Veronica Hamel against a monstrous female villain--a pediatric nurse who kills babies.

Adapted from a book by Dan Reed and Kelly Moore about a 1982 murder case in Texas, the story charts the battle of real-life pediatrician Kathleen Holland, who had everything (career, husband, new life in a small town) and lost it all when she was suspected of murdering an infant patient with a lethal drug injection.

As the woman in jeopardy, with the whole town turning against her, Hamel is steely, cool and angry, never teary or histrionic. She softens agreeably in scenes with kids in her clinic and with her loving husband (Scott Paulin).

It’s the doctor’s plain-looking and efficient nurse, who’s warped by a twisted salvation/savior Joan of Arc complex, that catches your darkest nightmares. Susan Ruttan (“L.A. Law”) is perfectly cast as the real-life Genene Jones (now serving 99 years in the Texas State Prison). The movie is sparked by the unfolding of her dementia, her no-holds barred confrontation with Hamel, and her riveting burst of vitriol on the witness stand.

Ruttan is dowdy and even sublimely serene about her crimes, yet it’s not a ghoulish role. Director Richard Colla and writers Vicki Polon, L. Virginia Browne and Andrew Laskos dramatize only one murder, in the course of what appears at first to be an ordinary emergency medical crisis.