TV REVIEWS : ‘Trouble With Evan’: Family

Television, which brought us the seminal “An American Family,” offers another painfully explicit view inside a torn family tonight in “The Trouble With Evan,” about a violent 11-year-old boy and the family atmosphere that bred him.

In this 90-minute “Frontline”-Canadian Broadcasting Corp. co-production by Neil Docherty, Evan first appears to be a wild child with no moral compass. His pyromania alone is nearly out of control, with Mike claiming that the boy almost started a forest fire. When he isn’t attacking other schoolkids, he is stealing money, pulling dangerous pranks and seemingly on course for teen-age delinquency and worse.

Docherty subtly constructs a surprising narrative, which gradually reveals that the trouble with Evan is the trouble with Evan’s family. There’s a novel’s worth of complications here, but fundamentally, Evan feels neglected by Mike, who admits that he has devoted little time to the boy, his stepson. Evan appears to be like a plant that hasn’t been watered, a striking reminder of why boys need a father perhaps even more than they need a mother.

* “The Trouble With Evan” airs at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, and at 8 on KVCR-TV Channel 24.