‘Murder’ Meanders Without a Clue

Just watching “Murder in a Small Town” is capital punishment.

Cable’s A&E; network--at its best when airing sly, meticulously staged British mysteries with complex sleuths from Sherlock Holmes to Inspectors Frost and Morse--this time has Gene Wilder starring in a two-hour brick that he wrote with Gilbert Pearlman.

Wilder is stunningly miscast as shrewd amateur detective Cash Carter, a former Broadway director who transferred his efforts to community theater in Stamford, Conn., after the murder of his wife.

That was seven years ago. It’s now 1938, time for another homicide, and that big lug of a cop, Lt. Tony Rossini (Mike Starr), needs help solving it. So he asks his more worldly chum, Cash, to do the primary brain work. There are plenty of suspects, for the victim (Terry O’Quinn) is a nasty theater figure with enemies galore.

The heavily mannered script misses when going for humor and is even less fruitful when pursuing thrills and suspense. There is no sharpness here. So slow and meandering is “Murder in a Small Town” that you get the impression that director Joyce Chopra is snoozing at the controls.

Yet no writing or direction here could overcome the fatal drawback of someone as unpersuasive as Wilder in the role of a crime solver with the keen, analytical noodle to peel back layers of secrecy and subterfuge. Instead of mental toughness and authority, you get his familiar sweetness and rounded edges. Sherlock would be twisting in his grave.

* “Murder in a Small Town” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on A&E.; The network has rated it TVG, suitable for general audiences.