TV REVIEWS : Sleepy Drama in Bland ‘Small Town’

With its languid pace and homespun feel, “Incident in a Small Town” (Sunday on CBS at 9 p.m.) has little trouble capturing the kind of rural ambience suggested in its title. This second sequel to the 1991 TV movie “The Incident” will most likely appeal to those retiring types whose viewing habits run along the lines of “Murder, She Wrote.”

Unfortunately, other viewers may find themselves nodding off while watching this sleepy drama. Even the movie’s two veteran stars, Walter Matthau and Harry Morgan, appear less than energized by their respective roles as lawyer Harmon Cobb and Judge Stoddard Bell.

The movie unfolds after Bell’s estranged daughter Lily (Stephanie Zimbalist) beckons her father to her rural community in Illinois in 1953. She wants legal help in dealing with her abusive ex-boyfriend, Frank (David Nerman), who has returned in the hopes of establishing a relationship with their illegitimate 13-year-old son, John (Nick Stahl).

Lily requests that her father and his old legal partner Cobb obtain a restraining order against Frank. But John--who does not know that he was born out of wedlock or that he was conceived during a rape--desperately wants a father and begins to see Frank despite Lily’s objections.

“Incident in a Small Town” should gain some steam after an intoxicated Frank is killed during a confrontation with Lily. But many of the scenes examining the killing represent courtroom drama at its most conventional.

A harder look at the difficulties faced by a woman in the 1940s and ‘50s who bears a child out of marriage would have helped galvanize this movie. As it is, the viewer is simply left to assume that Lily is made a pariah after it is publicly revealed that she has always been “Miss” Bell. In addition, the drama only takes a superficial look at the rocky relationship between Lily and her father. Judge Bell had coldly rejected Lily after she had given birth to her illegitimate son.

Matthau could have been a strong anchor to “Incident in a Small Town” had he been better utilized. His aging attorney occasionally flashes an engaging sense of humor and an independent streak. Alas, Matthau (playing Cobb for the third time) isn’t allowed the space to develop his character into someone truly memorable.

Instead of being hard-hitting and poignant, “Incident in a Small Town” is soft and bland.