TV REVIEW : Sheldon’s ‘Sands’ Less Than Expected

Maybe it’s the recession, but Sidney Sheldon’s “The Sands of Time” (tonight and Tuesday on KTLA-TV Channel 5 at 8 p.m.) lacks the gaudy extravagance customarily associated with TV adaptations of Sheldon’s romance novels.

Most of this four-hour miniseries, top-lining Michael Nouri and Deborah Raffin, seems to be spent in the woods of rural Spain. But Sheldon fans have come to expect more than this. The last Sheldon TV epic, last November’s “Memories of Midnight,” not only had glossier stars (Jane Seymour and Omar Sharif) but also infinitely more style and glamour.

Well, not every Sheldon movie is going to read like a Sheldon book, but that doesn’t excuse a script so plodding that you really do feel as if you’re walking through the sands of time--or sand anyway.

Let’s try a little high concept. The hook here is three nuns on the run. One of them (Amanda Plummer) is unstable. Another (Elizabeth Gracen) is the wild daughter of a gangster. The third (the short-clipped Raffin) is the angelic one, a former orphan turned billionairess who falls for her dashing savior and guerrilla leader (Nouri).

The villain pursuing them all is a ruthless Spanish colonel (James Brolin in a performance so hokey it’s almost comical). The production, directed by Gary Nelson and scripted by Richard Hack and producer Michael Viner, suggests a movie that was shot on the run without anyone looking at the dailies.