No Masterpiece, but Darn Close

Its title promises the improbable. For a series with such a high opinion of itself, England-bred “Masterpiece Theatre” has yielded relatively few masterworks in more than two decades on PBS.

Arguably the last and best came seven seasons ago with the American debut of “The Jewel in the Crown,” a scintillating, 14-part rendering of Paul Scott’s “The Raj Quartet” that ranks among the finest TV drama ever.

Even while only occasionally being an occasion, however, “Masterpiece Theatre” has nevertheless given PBS a gleaming signature program and, anchored by the tweedy nobility of Alistair Cooke, a sheen of superiority on Sunday nights unrivaled by competitors.

The present season’s uneven start notwithstanding, “Masterpiece Theatre” has been consistently worthy through the years, if not wonderful. And this usually-good-but-not-great syndrome is extended at 9 p.m. Sunday on KCET Channel 28 with the premiere of “She’s Been Away,” a two-hour BBC production whose brief theatrical release in 1989 makes it the last film appearance by Peggy Ashcroft.

The program will be followed by a 7 1/2-minute tribute to the revered Ashcroft, who died last June at age 83. In fact, “She’s Been Away” is its own tribute to her, not only because she performs so superbly Sunday as a woman jettisoned into an alien society after 60 years in a mental institution, but also by virtue of her being directed here by Peter Hall and acting alongside James Fox and Geraldine James.

Hall founded England’s Royal Shakespeare Company, with which Ashcroft was so closely associated through the years. Fox previously joined Ashcroft in “A Passage to India,” the 1984 David Lean film that earned her an Oscar for her work as Englishwoman Mrs. Moore. And it was James who acted with her in “The Jewel in the Crown,” which featured an Emmy-winning, even more memorable performance by Ashcroft as the missionary Barbie Batchelor.

In her few screen appearances, Ashcroft most often played characters somewhat obscured by layers of mystery. Mrs. Moore, Barbie Batchelor and Lillian--the pivotal figure in “She’s Been Away”--are women shrouded by enigma. Especially Lillian, whose release from a mental institution has a profound impact on the lives of her well-to-do nephew, Hugh Ambrose (Fox), and his wife, Harriet (James), with whom Lillian goes to live in London.

You can take the woman out of the institution, but not the institution out of the woman, however, and Lillian’s long silences and eccentric habits are an immediate challenge to the tolerant Hugh and mercurial Harriet. Director Hall is very good at substituting the camera for Lillian’s eyes, whether she’s passively glaring at a bare wall, recoiling from a terrifying new world or silently observing others observe her. “She’s a gentle vegetable,” says someone who knew her as a young girl.

Whether that’s true remains to be seen. Both Lillian and Harriet evolve significantly in Stephen Poliakoff’s tender, wryly witty teleplay, and he adroitly uses their volatile relationship to comment on contemporary urban manners and hazards. At one point, for example, Lillian watches almost sublimely as small boys on skateboards break into Harriet’s Jaguar and steal its radio.

As it turns out, Harriet is as much imprisoned as Lillian has been, and this is ultimately a story about the strange, uneasy alliance between them that is played out during an improbable adventure that becomes at once comic and sad. Ashcroft is ever-so subtle and nuanced as someone tragically left to rot for most of her life. And James is just a knockout, ranging from spectacular to grandly ironic as a newly pregnant mother driven to fits of big-bellied rage by her stuffy husband and their tedious life together.

Not a masterpiece, but very, very good.

“One Against the Wind,” on the other hand, is World War II for romantics.

Airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on CBS (Channels 2 and 8), this is “Hallmark Hall of Fame” at its most famished, a beautifully staged but flawed, cliche-ravaged drama in which two particularly good actors, Judy Davis and Sam Neill, go down in flames like Spitfires defending London.

Directed by Larry Elikann, written by Chris Bryant and luxuriantly filmed in Luxembourg, “One Against the Wind” traces the war odyssey of Mary Lindell (Davis), a true-life, English-born woman said to have operated the most successful escape route for downed Allied airmen in Nazi-occupied France.

The story moves back and forth between France, where Lindell and her son, Maurice (Christien Anholt), are saving fliers, and England, where British intelligence officer James Leggatt (Neill) monitors her activities for both professional and personal reasons. In this account, Capt. Leggatt, after being the first airman she rescues, lusts for his savior.

Meanwhile, Lindell finds her nemesis in a sadistic, handsome, beautifully tailored, Continental, cultured, Kipling-quoting SS officer (Anthony Higgins), who, as it turns out, was educated in her country.

Bravely, Davis gets through this without cracking a smile, even though “One Against the Wind” offers much to laugh about. It never adequately explains why Lindell is initially treated so gently by the Nazis or why later, when she’s on the lam, she’s able to efficiently operate her escape channel so openly, even brazenly wearing her familiar Red Cross uniform in the streets.

The overwrought Hollywood ending--lacking only Robert Taylor and Hedy Lamarr--needs no explanation.