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‘Dash’: Style Over Substance

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“Dash and Lilly” doesn’t halt television’s history of squandering top acting talent on slim biographies. It’s as pliantly slender as Sam Spade’s charming but homicidal Brigid O’Shaughnessy in “The Maltese Falcon.”

Yet this narrow through-a-transom account of a colorful U.S. literary couple--who spent three volatile decades viewing life together in part through a gin glass and cigarette smoke--is stylish and well-acted enough to command your attention on the Arts & Entertainment network.

Again playing an American flawlessly, Australian Judy Davis is all exposed nerve endings as lusty playwright Lillian Hellman, author of “The Children’s Hour” and “Toys in the Attic.” And Sam Shepard is self-destructively in disrepair as Dashiell Hammett, one of America’s foremost detective novelists, who introduced the hard-boiled Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” and witty, boozing sophisticates Nick and Nora Charles in “The Thin Man,” which generated scores of movie and TV clones about urbane crime-solving couples.

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For more on him, tune in June 30 to a PBS “American Masters” documentary devoted to Hammett, whom many regard as a literary behemoth even though his talent went arid in his last 27 years of life.

Relegated to footnote status as Hellman’s confidant, meanwhile, is acerbic writer Dorothy Parker (Bebe Neuwirth), whose role is that of a sponge soaking up a friend’s life like a sitcom neighbor who pops in for an earful, then exits with a wisecrack.

Making her feature-length directorial debut here with some flair is Kathy Bates, her pacing of Jerry Ludwig’s script giving “Dash and Lilly” the feel of history with a tail wind. That means few pauses for reflection, unfortunately, in a story that initially boomerangs between 1952, when Hellman is about to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in advance of her being blacklisted, and her 1930 introduction to Hammett when both were married.

She comes on to him, he’s receptive, and yada yada yada. Thereafter, as their close relationship matures, they’re frequently apart and, when together, frequently at odds until near the end of Hammett’s life, when Hellman watches him enter codgerhood with lungs ravaged by cancer.

Even that is not as momentous as it should be in “Dash and Lilly,” which is highly watchable, yet rarely as meaty as its fascinating subjects deserve.

* “Dash and Lilly” airs tonight at 5, 7, 9, and 11 on A&E.; The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).

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Monica Undressed: Talk about your endless hangovers. Late last week, NBC’s ever-topical Jay Leno was still doing one-liners about Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton.

Not that Lewinsky, in particular, doesn’t know a howlingly funny joke when she lives through one.

Besides being almost surreal, her appearance earlier this month on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” disclosed more about her than did her get-rich-quick book or television interviews with Matt Lauer and Barbara Walters.

To the woman who collaborated with a reckless, skirt-chasing, philandering chief executive in nearly toppling his presidency, the last two years obviously have been one big comedy sketch. What’s more, she’s now anxious to further cash in on her fame and the nation’s misery. As anxious as “Saturday Night Live” was to profit from her ambition.

And they call Howard Stern’s late-night CBS show obscene.

In case you missed it, one lame skit found Lewinsky as herself schmoozing in a Malibu beach house she shared with a bathrobed former President Clinton, played by Darrell Hammond, at one point calling him a “big creep.” In another she played herself, a smaller creep, on a call-in show about affairs with older men, mentioning that she “had phone sex with this one guy,” but that “his name doesn’t really matter.”

One of the callers was the very large John Goodman, making a return appearance on “Saturday Night Live” as Linda Tripp.

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In other words, Lewinsky, who has said how deeply wounded she was by jokes about her weight, found nothing wrong being in a sketch depicting her nemesis, Tripp, as hippo-sized.

How do you spell Lewinsky?H-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e.

I’m Joss, He’s Alec: In his younger days in England, Alec Guinness was billed as “the man of a thousand faces.” One of them being Joss Ackland’s, apparently.

Well, look, you would understand some viewers mistaking Ackland for the more famous Guinness. Although Ackland has a thicker body, both have prominent ears and near-bald heads, and there is a facial resemblance. Both, too, are Brits and fine character actors.

But you’d expect Bravo, which proudly calls itself the “Film and Arts Network,” to know the difference.

It doesn’t, witness the “bumpers” it has run entering commercial breaks during its showings of “White Mischief,” which refer repeatedly to Guinness as being the 1988 film’s co-star.

Nope. It’s Ackland.

The irony is that only a few evenings after falsely advertising Guinness in “White Mischief,” Bravo ran a 1986 interview with the real Guinness. As a bonus, it did not identify him as Ackland.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached by e-mail at calendar@latimes.com.

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