TV REVIEW : ‘Secret Passion’ a Lowbrow, Trashy Blast

Within seconds of the opening of the mystery-action drama “The Secret Passion of Robert Clayton” (premiering on USA tonight), the title character, a frustrated attorney who’s just lost a case, angrily tells the press: “We had an all-white jury and a black defendant with a history of drugs.” In short, goes the implication, how could he get a fair trial?

In nerve-rattled L.A., that’s a loaded teaser, albeit an unwitting one. Nobody nor anything in this steamy, lilac-drenched Southern hothouse of a cable movie is what they appear to be. The joy ride here--fed by the lust of a father and son for the same woman--may be lowbrow but the teleplay by Brian Ross (from a story by Ross and Lucky Gold) is a potboiler with enough twists to make it work.

Fed up with the big-city legal system, the aforementioned attorney (the idealistic Scott Valentine) re-emerges in the piney woods of his native Georgia as the local D.A. At a high school reunion full of rich-boy yahoos, the attorney meets his old heartthrob (the tarty Eve Gordon), as beauteous, devious and trampy as ever.

She’s married to the vicious Kevin Conroy, classic spoiled son of old plantation inbreeding, whose bondage fling with a pair of stripper-hookers triggers the murderous plot. Although the role is brief, the stripper who lives to tell about it is the most vital actor in the show (Elizabeth Swackhamer, daughter of the director, E. W. Swackhamer).

Meanwhile, the arabesque of serpents and liars reaches its apogee in the shady, silver-haired figure of the young attorney’s barrister father (John Mahoney), who winds up as his son’s opposing legal counsel in the murder trial, not to mention his rival in bed.

The characters are derivative and the principal performances are rather bland, but the production and the story are trashy fun--just the ticket to get your mind off the primary results.