TV REVIEW : Natalie Cole--Singer and Actress--Does Double Duty

Natalie Cole hits both ends of the glamour spectrum this week, and both with a seasonal flourish: Tonight, she’s dressing up, with multiple costume changes, to carol through her own hourlong Christmas special. Thursday night, she’s dowdying down, to play a ‘50s maid, in her first dramatic, non-singing lead role in a TV movie.

Cole acquits herself as thespian as well as thrush in this one-woman family-entertainment onslaught--though, in the final rendering, most audiences will still prefer her swingin’ to sweeping.

The title of “Natalie Cole’s Untraditional Traditional Christmas” is a bit of a misnomer: It’s hard to find anything the slightest bit untraditional about this PBS “Great Performances” installment.

The sets, the orchestra, the patter, the songs, even the succession of dresses and ‘dos--everything here bespeaks ‘60s in a big way, and that’s pretty much all for the best, recalling the halcyon days when Dad’s calming presence graced homes as ubiquitously as mistletoe.

One difference is that a Nat (King) Cole special would’ve featured guest stars, while Natalie’s underpopulated hour has “Sesame Street’s” Elmo as the only fellow celebrity. Basically it’s a good-enough live video counterpart to Cole’s class-act new album, “Holly & Ivy,” with livening bits of blues (“Merry Christmas Baby”) and gospel (“Joy to the World”) spiking the eggnog best represented by--surprise--”The Christmas Song.”

From those chestnuts, it’s on Thursday to her TV movie-starring debut, the USA Network’s “Lily in Winter,” which gives Cole a chance to expand on the acting career she commenced with guest shots on “I’ll Fly Away” a couple years back. She’s been a quick study at how to underplay; only in isolated moments here does she become too enthusiastic with the Southern accent she employs as a New York maid and nanny venturing back to her Alabama roots.

The melodrama, though, sustains too many predictable notes to hold the attention of any but the very young or very sentimentally inclined. Cole has as her charge a neglected-feeling boy (Brian Bonsall), who insists on tagging along when she panics during an attempted robbery of her employers’ home and flees back to her impoverished family.

Few surprises ensue as the law sets out to solve the would-be kidnaping and this on-the-lam lady has to deal with a familial mess she left behind years ago along with her new troubles.

Still, the camera loves Cole’s soulful eyes, and her surprisingly even emoting doesn’t pale too much alongside an accomplished supporting turn from Marla Gibbs as her Alabama mom. The promise of more acting gigs may be the best present Cole gets this Christmas.

* “Natalie Cole’s Untraditional Traditional Christmas” airs tonight at 7:30 on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, at 8 p.m. on KOCE-TV Channel 50 and Thursday at 9 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24. “Lily in Winter” airs Thursday at 9 p.m. on the USA cable channel.