‘What the Deaf Man Heard’ Probes Small-Town Secrets

It seems, on the face of it, to be a contrived idea for a story. A 10-year-old boy, orphaned in a small Georgia town in the mid-1940s, makes a calculated decision to spend the next 20 years pretending to be deaf and mute. In doing so, he gains access to the town’s undercurrent of dark secrets and stories.

But CBS’ “What the Deaf Man Heard,” based on G.D. Gearino’s novel, moves well beyond the obvious aspects of the contrivance to create a beautifully textured, eminently believable view of the complex layers of life in a small Southern town.

When young Sammy Ayers is left behind on a bus bound for Barrington, Ga., he arrives in the town with virtually no identity. Traumatized by the unexpected absence of his mother, he is momentarily speechless. Station manager Norm Jenkins (Tom Skerritt) and short-order cook Lucille (Judith Ivey) decide that Sammy is deaf and mute, and the boy--receiving more attention than he’s ever had--decides to go along with their assumption.

Sammy’s spontaneous deception continues for the next 20 years, as he grows up in the town, becomes its prime handyman and the repository of its many secrets. The plot--which occasionally telegraphs some of its key points--unfolds with a complex web of dramatic linkages.

With a startling array of well-known actors--Ivey and Skerritt, as well as Matthew Modine, Claire Bloom, James Earl Jones and Bernadette Peters among them--the production runs the risk of becoming an assemblage of star vehicle scenes. But, without exception, the actors have approached their parts, some of which are quite small, with care and sensitivity.

Skerritt and Ivey, in particular, virtually disappear into their characters, transforming them into convincing, everyday people. Modine’s laid-back rendering of the adult Sammy provides yet another appealing entry in his line of good-guy characterizations. And the lesser-known Anne Bobby as Tallasse, the girl Sammy has always loved, conjures up a sensitive, insightful portrayal.

John Kent Harrison, directing Robert W. Lenski’s well-crafted screenplay, creates a dramatic timing that holds its flow until the very end.

* “What the Deaf Man Heard” airs under the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” umbrella Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS (Channel 2). The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).