Neither Big Nor Great, They’re Still Miniseries

“Miniseries” is the label misapplied in U.S. television to every prime-time entertainment program that extends beyond a single evening. In the old days, a miniseries was a spangled event, from “Roots” to “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance”--a thick slab of programming to build a week or two around.

The larger the budget, the larger the risk, though. Thus, by the start of the ‘90s, the major networks, with their audiences eroding, had become strikingly less adventurous in mounting costly, sprawling dramas that demanded lengthy commitments of time from viewers who had more and more TV options at their fingertips. That’s not to say that longer is necessarily better, only that the option of length is increasingly absent. In contrast to earlier times, the “miniseries” norm today stacks up like a sound bite--two parts and see ya later.

At least “A Woman of Independent Means” is a chubbier chunk off the old block: three handsomely staged nights (enough to earn an “epic” brand from NBC’s publicity department) of Sally Field-infused melodrama spanning more than six decades of family history that play like a yellowed memoir recovered from the musty attic.

*

In fact, the storytelling device of this six-hour TV saga--and of Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey’s 1978 novel of the same title, from which it is drawn--is indeed a collection of fictional letters that were inspired by the life of the author’s grandmother. On television, they form Field’s off-screen narration.

By contrast, there is nothing inspirational, quaint or grannyish about “The Boys of St. Vincent,” a disturbing Canadian movie edited into a two-parter for Canadian television and its subsequent airing on cable’s Arts & Entertainment network opposite Field’s feisty, durable matriarch.

Credit A&E; with having the spine to air something potentially controversial. Yet because A&E; has yet to meet a sensitive story that it couldn’t undermine with its intrusive placement of commercials, the U.S. television debut of “The Boys of St. Vincent” may test the patience of viewers even as it transfixes them with the child-abuse miseries at a fictional Catholic orphanage in Newfoundland, Ontario--evil acts obscured by fat layers of church and government cover-up.

Unruptured by commercials, “The Boys of St. Vincent” is bloodlessly austere and as stunningly grim and powerful as “A Woman of Independent Means” is diverting and warmblooded (when also viewed minus commercials).

Although it opens in the mid-1970s, “The Boys of St. Vincent” resembles an actual scandal that rocked a segment of Canada in 1988.

The villainy in the movie is widely shared, but it’s Brother Lavin (chillingly played by Henry Czerny), supervisor of an All Saints Brothers orphanage in Western Canada, who looms most menacingly in this unsparing, tough-minded script from Des Walsh, director John N. Smith and producer Sam Grana.

Presiding over a home where kids are sexually terrorized by priests who wear crosses tucked into their belts like holy daggers, the twisted, glowering Lavin is a sort of Fagin in cleric’s robes. At times he has the outward charisma of a gentle spirit. Yet when he is tender, it’s a destructive, depraved tenderness. And his lust for a 10-year-old (Johnny Morina), whom he beats and repeatedly molests, is our introduction to the systematic sexual abuse that occurs in this hallowed institution while politically connected church cronies and their government pals conveniently look the other way.

Although they have a residence, these are homeless kids in the truest sense, having no one to shield them from the demons who control the darkened halls of their environment.

What this intense horror story doesn’t do is explain why so many of these Catholic brothers are child abusers and how it would be possible for so many psychologically gnarled misfits to be assigned to the same orphanage. What it does do is expose in ways that make you wince, the enduring pain of abuse victims, pain that translates to ruined lives.

That is the potent undercurrent of Part 2 when Lavin--surfacing 15 years later as a married family man and solid citizen, living sedately in Montreal after leaving the church--appears likely to get his comeuppance when required to face his now-grown accusers during a belated government inquiry.

Although sexual abuse is no stranger to TV drama, its treatment here is uncommonly candid, making “The Boys of St. Vincent” a must-see for those able to withstand its sharp blast of reality.

The demons are more conventional in “A Woman of Independent Means.”

A society that relegates women to observer status . . . a difficult mother-in-law . . . illness that deprives her of loved ones . . . an economic depression that destroys a close friend . . . a combative relationship with her daughter . . . the atrophy of extreme old age.

Such are the heartaches threading the long life of Field’s Bess Steed Garner, whom we meet in 1907 as a demure young Texan who has just married her childhood sweetheart, Rob Steed (Tony Goldwyn). Ahead of Bess are more than 60 years, during which she’ll inherit a fortune from her mother--giving her the kind of independence available to few women of her generation--and will undergo enormous personal growth as a sort of rebel without any discernible cause.

Along the way, she buries a lot of people and suffers her share of setbacks. Yet Bess is no tragic, calamitous figure beset by constant misfortune. In fact, Episode 1 evolves as dreamily as a summer evening of sipping lemonade on the front-porch swing, failing to ignite even when a fire destroys the Steed house. Only as the episode ends does that swing fall with a crash, sending Bess into Part 2 with increased responsibilities as a mother and crusader on behalf of Rob’s insurance business clients.

Goldwyn’s Rob is a bit of a vacant potato, but later Ron Silver will provide some intensity as Bess’ suitor and financial counselor, and still later Aussie actor Jack Thompson turns on his endearing twang as a lovable yokel of a Texas businessman who becomes Bess’ second husband. It’s all very watchable.

“A Woman of Independent Means” is a curious hybrid, though. Except for an occasional sharp jolt and glint of poignancy befitting the story’s body count, Cindy Myers’ teleplay glides without seeming to touch the ground. You don’t feel a lot. Yet Field performs ably (although her flowery Southernese sounds un-Texan) and makes a simply fabulous old lady, Robert Greenwald directs very well and the production--with its attention to detail and artfully interwoven classic pop tunes--is a knockout.

In fact, thanks largely to the photography of Steve Shaw and the production designs of Stephen Marsh, “A Woman of Independent Means” is better looking than any period U.S. television program within memory. Although not a great miniseries, or a great big one, it is a pleasant way to spend six hours.

* “A Woman of Independent Means” airs Sunday, Monday and Wednesday at 9 p.m. on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39). “The Boys of St. Vincent” airs Sunday and Monday at 6 and 10 p.m. on cable’s A&E.;