Writing Diminishes Well-Cast ‘Rescuers’

In a world in which it takes a certain amount of courage just to walk out the door, it’s comforting to be reminded of good deeds and basic human decency.

Hungry for such stories, many viewers no doubt will embrace “Rescuers: Stories of Courage,” Showtime’s mini film series relating the true stories of people who risked everything to try to protect Jews and others targeted by the Nazis.

This is no “Schindler’s List,” however. In the debut segment--”Two Women,” arriving at 8 p.m. Sunday--a pair of inherently compelling tales are diminished by the stilted ways in which they are told. This is especially disappointing given the talent involved: co-executive producer Barbra Streisand director Peter Bogdanovich and, in these first films, actresses Elizabeth Perkins and Sela Ward.

“Mamusha,” starring Perkins as a Polish Catholic woman who shelters a Jewish boy by raising him as her own, tends to over-explain.

“Woman on a Bicycle,” starring Ward as a French Catholic woman who assists the Resistance and helps hide Jewish families, errs in the other direction--failing to sufficiently explain the workings of Vichy France and the activities in which this woman is involved.

Both are burdened by clunky plotting and dialogue, with a tendency to oversimplify everything into lines such as (to Ward’s character), “Even though you and your maman are only women and must stay home and merely stir the soup pot, I will strike a blow for you.”

With compassion perpetually etched in her furrowed brow, Perkins somehow injects believability into her cliched lines. But that troubled look in Ward’s eyes may not be acting, since the hole-strewn script she’s working from leaves us wondering whether her character willingly embroils herself in the Resistance or is unwittingly drawn in by her sense of duty to the outspoken bishop of the diocese for which she works.

The period details are first-rate, however, whether evoking the deceptively sunny innocence of Vichy France or the grim nightmare of the Vilna ghetto. And Bogdanovich’s direction adds at least a bit of texture to the rudimentary scripts, based on Gay Block and Malka Drucker’s book “Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust.”

The future installments are “Two Couples,” starring Dana Delany and Linda Hamilton, sometime in April or May; and “Two Families,” starring Daryl Hannah, later next year.

* “Rescuers” debuts at 8 p.m. Sunday on cable’s Showtime. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be inappropriate for young children).