TV REVIEW : A Woman’s ‘War’ a Bit of a Viewer Battle

It took six years and many scholarly historical advisers to make “Mary Silliman’s War,” tonight’s fact-based saga on Lifetime about a Connecticut woman’s trials and tribulations during the American Revolution.

The effort for authenticity shows in gorgeous misty shots (in Nova Scotia) of the town, riverside and country, and in portrait-come-to-life images of townspeople, posed and lit with a milky glow. It shows in the faithful re-creation of 18th Century buildings, costumes, furniture and music.

And it shows, regrettably, in an overly reverential treatment of a text that, for the most part, infuses what is intended as a very human and timely story about politically inspired, neighbor-against-neighbor hatreds with the impersonal remove of a distant history lesson.

In the film, conceived by Steven Schecter and written by Schecter and Louisa Burns-Bisogno, Nancy Palk plays the dutiful wife and mother who goes beyond the expectations of her sex in those exceedingly patriarchal times to win the release of her husband, State Atty. Selleck Silliman (Richard Donat), who is held for ransom by the British.

Palk conveys Mary’s strength of purpose, matched by Donat’s dignified presence, but both carry a hint of historical monument about them, as do other characters in the film--so much so that when violence occurs, it has a sense of unreality about it, not the strived-for shock of recognition.

Based on “The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America,” by Richard and Joy Day Buel, the film uses Mary’s diary entries and letters as Palk’s voice-over narrative, but even the tenor of the memoirs, written with ladylike restraint, holds viewers at a distance.

* “Mary Silliman’s War” airs at 9 tonight on cable’s Lifetime channel.