‘A Simple Twist of Fate’

With this captivating heart-tugger, Steve Martin (pictured) took an all-out plunge of basing this 1994 film on no less than George Eliot’s 1861 grim novel “Silas Marner.” What Martin, who also wrote the screenplay, and director Gillies MacKinnon have created in their very free adaptation is a family film that might be best described as a serious comedy. Martin’s Michael McCann, a happy, dedicated schoolteacher in a Southern small town, finds himself utterly devastated when his wife finally confesses that the baby she is expecting isn’t his. The next thing we know McCann’s become a reclusive cabinet maker who, like Silas Marner, devotes his evenings to surveying his collection of gold coins. Whoosh! The coins disappear. Whoosh! A golden-haired toddler wanders into McCann’s home one wintry night (TMC Tuesday at 2:35 p.m. and 3:35 a.m.).