TV REVIEWS : Rancor and Violence in ‘The Best of Families’

“In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride and Madness” (airing at 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday on CBS, Channels 2 and 8) is what you might call a no-brainer. Featuring a sensationalistic true-crime plot and a collection of skin-deep characters, it comes across like a four-hour dramatic version of “Hard Copy.”

The overly long TV movie basically hinges on the combustive and ultimately violent behavior of Susie Sharp Newsom (Kelly McGillis), a comely Southern blue blood who plunges off the emotional deep end after her failed marriage to a dentist (Keith Carradine).

The rather tedious Part One gives the viewer a mostly exterior view of the couple’s relationship as it moves from premarital bliss to post-wedding rancor. Susie’s innumerable tantrums are more apt to set the eyes rolling in exasperation than to elicit significant alarm or sympathy. She seems less a fully realized character than a formidable bundle of hostility and neurotic mannerisms.

Part Two establishes a little momentum with a few bizarre plot developments. Susie begins a relationship with her deranged cousin Fritz, a paramilitary gun nut who ostensibly thinks he’s running missions for the CIA. Suddenly, Susie’s two young sons are being treated like grunts in the Marines rather than kids starving for love and comfort. Fritz is so far gone that he even dresses his little troop up in Army fatigues and has them ready to ingest cyanide in the event of “enemy” capture.

All of this leaves ex-husband Tom understandably desperate to gain legal custody of his sons. Unfortunately, his actions also serve to further rile the violent souls of Susie and Fritz. From here the pace of the movie quickens and, while as a character study it’s still not “Crime and Punishment,” “In the Best of Families” at least finishes with a pulse you can feel.