TV REVIEWS : Milkman’s ‘Last Run’ Irresistible on KCET

As part of what it is calling its “cultural diversity month” programming, KCET-TV Channel 28 is airing at 6:30 tonight Lauren Malkasian’s irresistible half-hour “The Last Run,” in which she follows milkman Bill Ogburn on his final day of work before retiring.

For more than 40 years, the Iowa-born Ogburn has been delivering milk in Boyle Heights. Obviously, the genial, kindly Ogburn has observed great changes in the area, once predominantly Jewish and now predominantly Latino, but he has discovered that people are more alike than different.

To watch Ogburn, a stocky, smiling man, make his farewells--mainly to elderly women for whom he has become a friend, even part of the family--is to realize that he represents the all-but-vanished era when tradesmen helped create a sense of community within a neighborhood.

We’re not told whether someone will be taking over Ogburn’s route. In any event, it’s clear that Ogburn is truly irreplaceable to those who have known him for decades. (One of his customers has lived in her home since 1906.) He’s a man who believes in the virtually extinct personal touch and in good service--that “the customer is doing me a favor to give me business.”

With the retirement of Bill Ogburn, one Los Angeles neighborhood has become just that much more impersonal a place in which to live.