TV REVIEWS : ‘Best of Friends’ a Dramatic Conversation Well-Aged

“Best of Friends” is that rarefied television drama--so civilized that it’s disarming. (It airs on “Masterpiece Theatre” Sunday, 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24.)

We are in the company of three dear friends who were towering figures in British intellectual society: George Bernard Shaw; Dame Laurentia MacLachlan, beloved Abbess of Stanbrook Abbey, and Sir Sydney Cockerell, celebrated curator of the Fitzwillam Museum at Cambridge.

Adapted by Hugh Whitmore from his play, all the words you hear are from the writings of the drama’s three real subjects--chiefly their thicket of correspondence through most of the first half of this century.

A friendship kept alive by letter-writing instead of phones, faxes and cassettes is a curiosity to most of us. But before you nod off at the daunting thought of breeching a sheer wall of language, take heart: The written exchanges among these friends are dramatically performed, enlivened by the interplay of bountiful, vibrant characters.

The style, under Alvin Rakoff’s fluid direction, is free-flowing and expressionistic, with the actors materializing almost dreamlike in their studies and gardens. Initially, while adjusting to the show’s unique form, attention centers on the top-flight cast. But gradually, like a ripple in a stream, the characters widen and deepen until you forget that that’s Patrick McGoohan behind the huge beard and Dame Wendy Hiller under the nun’s robe and Sir John Gielgud twinkling behind those wire-rimmed glasses.

Hiller, who’s 80, and Gielgud, who’s 88 (McGoohan is the youngster at 65), bring to TV the luster of old age and the candor of friends whose tranquillity and integrity ripen the tone of the show.

Sparks fly, too, as when Shaw, through the barred windows of the abbey, presents a copy of his controversial “Adventures of a Black Girl and Her Search for God” to Sister MacLachlan, who considers the book blasphemous. She is deeply hurt (Hiller’s pallor turning white) and demands that Shaw retrieve all copies sold to the public. Shaw wasn’t welcome at the abbey for a whole year after that.