TV REVIEW : ‘50s-Style Costumes Steal Show in Sunny ‘Radiant City’

It’s no surprise when a street-corner doo-wop trio sings in Sunday’s ABC movie, “Radiant City.” You expect all the cast members to break into song in this easy-watching, sunny Kirstie Alley vehicle about a mom’s ambition to move her low-income family out of a ‘50s New York housing project.

That’s because director Robert Allan Ackerman’s light touch, the well-groomed interiors and exteriors, the show-stealing costumes and the soft-edged, likable characters with their brassy New York accents and exaggerated ‘50s attitude give the film the look and feel of a big, kitschy stage musical.

The benign goings-on in this blue-collar fantasy by Lewis Colick are intermittently observed, “Wonder Years”-style, by grade schooler Stewie (Adam Lamberg).

He watches as his pretty mom Gloria’s (Alley) yearning to get out of the projects and into the ‘burbs seems to be leading her into a dalliance with a restless, unemployed, would-be Jack Kerouac (Gil Bellows). Then he has to keep her secret as she defies her husband (Clancy Brown) and the housing authority by taking clandestine action to get the wherewithal to move.

All the cast members are fun to watch, not only for the way they maneuver through this low-key yarn but also for their endless changes of terrific ‘50s-style fashions designed by Dona Granata, represented most spectacularly by the supposedly economically depressed Gloria. Living with her postal employee husband, teenage daughter and young son in a small apartment, Alley, deeply brunet and sexy in redder-than-red lipstick, is seen in one full-skirted, multi-petticoated, sleeveless, bust-enhancing dress after another.

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“Radiant City” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on ABC (Channels 7 and 3).