Hallmark’s ‘Home’ Thin on Dramatic Impact

The death of a child is a painful topic for a television drama. More than almost any other life experience, its depiction touches the center of familial and parental emotions, resonating with currents of feeling virtually guaranteed to impact the viewing audience.

“Night Ride Home,” the 200th presentation of the Hallmark Hall of Fame airing on CBS Sunday at 9 p.m., takes on the subject in a story focused on the death of a teenage son (Jordan Brower) and the effect that his passing has upon his family. But, although the picture is blessed with a fine cast--including Keith Carradine and Rebecca De Mornay as Nora and Neal Mahler, the teenager’s parents, and Ellen Burstyn as Nora’s mother, Maggie--it ultimately stumbles in its failure to create an entirely believable story.

The script is assembled like a thematic jigsaw puzzle. When young Simon Mahler dies in an accident, each of the family members responds to the tragedy in fashions that affect the others: Nora’s self-centeredness and near-suicidal anger; Neal’s inability to risk expressing his feelings; the repressed guilt experienced by Simon’s sister Clea (portrayed with great sensitivity by Thora Birch).

But the presentation of these issues is far too calculated, and their solutions far too quickly accomplished. The script’s simplistic method of resolving what in real life would be significant emotional trauma is to provide a cathartic scene that almost immediately prompts a change in characters. Are we really to believe, for example, that Nora suddenly begins to understand herself after a conversation with her mother? Or that--after years of distancing--she abruptly decides to connect with her daughter?

Granting the need for television to truncate the details of the life process, “Night Ride Home” nonetheless does far too much dramatic shortchanging. And that’s a shame, because the subject matter is compelling, and the acting--in individual scenes, at least--is often extremely affecting. But, at the end of this well-intended production, one is left with a vague feeling of disbelief, of having never been connected to the real emotional truths of a family tragedy.

* “Night Ride Home” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS. The network has rated it TV-G.