‘Reckless’ Could Use Some Surgery

“Masterpiece Theatre” meets “General Hospital” Sunday.

The venerable PBS flagship series is hitting the skids big time with six bloated hours of what is being euphemistically titled “smart, funny, original entertainment.” Code: Soap opera. Britspeak doesn’t give it any more credibility.

Well, fine. Nothing wrong with a snort of fun. No one has insisted that “Masterpiece Theatre” be forever stuffy while steeping itself in Anglophilia. It’s just that the three-part “Reckless” is a brand of undistinguished middlebrow programming--sex and surgeons--available elsewhere on U.S. television. And the mandate of “Masterpiece Theatre,” at least in the eyes of its most loyal supporters, is to be distinctive, if not always superior.

That doesn’t necessarily mean period drama, sniffy literati and stiff upper lips forevermore. Risk-taking and contemporary stories should be as integral as costumed history to “Masterpiece Theatre,” as long as the efforts are smarter, funnier and more original than this indulged trifle from Granada Television.

Here’s the capsule: Thirtyish surgeon Dr. Owen Springer (Robson Green) gets the uncontrolled hots for middle-aged Anna Fairley (Francesca Annis), who happens to be--oy!--the wife of many years to arrogant surgeon Dr. Richard Crane (Michael Kitchen), the volatile Springer’s boss at the Manchester hospital where he has just been hired. The casually elegant Anna initially spurns the crude, working-class Owen’s advances, but raw passions intervene when she learns that Richard is having a fling of his own with the hospital administrator.

There are glints of strong dialogue in Paul Abbott’s teleplay, but his stabs at romantic farce are buried beneath the mundane nature of the material. Meanwhile, you wait seemingly forever for Anna to choose between these two immature, essentially unlikable twits, and the payoff is not worth it.

That able actor, Kitchen, is the most arresting of this trio. Annis’ angst-ridden Anna projects a dignified grace when not pawing at Owen in a sexual frenzy. And Green (a British heartthrob and pop music star) is an animal!

Six hours for this?

* “Reckless” airs on “Masterpiece Theatre” Sunday at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28. The first installment has been rated TV-14-L (may not be suitable for children under the age of 14), with an advisory for language.