TV REVIEW : ‘Prayer’: An AIDS Drama With Impact

“I’m 34. I’m dying of AIDS. I need to become my own adoption agency. Can you help me?”

It’s a measure of executive producer Lee Rose’s pungent teleplay, here illustrated by Linda Hamilton’s terminally ill mom desperately seeking to find new parents for her 8-year-old son before she dies, that USA cable’s “A Mother’s Prayer” brings dramatic, oft-overlooked dimension to the tragedy of AIDS.

In this instance, both AIDS and the woman-in-jeopardy genre are dusted off with unexpected impact. The production, shorn of easy preachment and false sentiment, was inspired by stories published in the New York Daily News about Brooklyn mother Rosemary Holmstrom (whose actual name is used in the script and who died last October, just days after this movie completed shooting).

In fact, the material would normally be called a tear-jerker except that Hamilton (who co-starred in the two “Terminator” movies) has so absorbed this single mother-in-denial to the bone and Larry Elikann’s direction is so terse and unvarnished that there’s no time for tears.

USA, largely identified with B-level TV movies that have no social conscience, takes a positive direction here in a production that features an edgy, tough performance from the stricken mother’s confused and angry son (Noah Fleiss).

In unusual supporting roles, Bruce Dern and Kate Nelligan as the adoptive parents on the Long Island shore contribute dramatic counterpoint to the atmosphere of the embattled mom and her street-wise son who live under the overhead El on the gritty turf of New York.

Local theatergoers may recognize actor and L.A. AIDS activist Michael Kearns in a scene at a gay men’s health crisis center, where, in fact, all the background players in the scene, including Kearns, were cast because they indeed have AIDS.

* “A Mother’s Prayer” airs at 9 tonight and repeats Sunday at 8 p.m. on USA.