‘Othello,’ With a Twist of Time

“Masterpiece Theatre,” which got famous last century as a PBS series to enjoy with a teacup on your knee, is having its strongest, grittiest January in some time, thanks to an inspired decision to air on consecutive Mondays a pair of contemporary British dramas linked by depictions of racism.

They’re a fitting prologue to February’s Black History Month.

Last week’s “The Murder of Stephen Lawrence” was one of the brawniest, most arresting works to appear on U.S. television this season, acquainting viewers on this side of the Atlantic with an actual 1993 case in which a black teenager in London was slain by racist white thugs who remain free.

And arriving tonight is “Othello.” No, not that “Othello,” but Andrew Davies’ plain-speaking adaptation that reconstitutes the famed Moor of Venice as John Othello, first black commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, who murders his wife, Dessie, in a jealous rage after his mind is poisoned by his scheming subordinate, Ben Jago.

This updated Shakespeare tragedy has problems but still delivers an energized two hours.

“Masterpiece Theatre” traditionally avoids risky hairpin curves, through the years seeing itself mostly as U.S. television’s stiff upper lip and elegant annex of the United Kingdom.

That makes its embrace of “The Murder of Stephen Lawrence” all the more striking. Here was a true-life story re-created so persuasively in raw, grainy documentary style that viewers tuning in late might have thought they were watching reality instead of Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hugh Quarshie and other skilled actors speaking lines from a script.

Stephen was fatally stabbed while waiting for a bus with a black friend in a shocking murder that made headlines and whipped up racial tensions in the U.K. for years. Police were accused of bungling the case by making no arrests in the critical first two weeks, thereby giving the suspects, whose names they had, time to destroy evidence, create alibis and intimidate potential witnesses.

The universal theme here is prejudice. Although Stephen was an innocent victim who had hoped to become an architect, he was initially thought by investigating police to be a thug himself, his mother (Jean-Baptiste) claimed in the TV account. “He was a black,” she said bitterly, “so he must be a criminal.”

This racial profiling theme--a volatile issue in the U.S. as well, most notably after Sept. 11--extends also to tonight’s “Othello,” which Davies says he wrote with the Lawrence case in mind.

It opens with director Geoffrey Saxe’s expertly staged street clashes between police and blacks who charge that officers murdered an unarmed black suspect who died in their custody. It turns out they’re right. Labeled guilty because of his skin color, he was dragged from his house by white cops and savagely beaten to death during an ensuing struggle.

And so it is, in a move to assuage black critics of the department, that Othello (Eamonn Walker), is named police commissioner, promoted over his best friend and confidante, assistant commissioner Jago (Christopher Eccleston). The spurned Jago accepts the news graciously to Othello’s face, then explodes, storming down a hallway shouting again and again: “Shoulda been me!”

Hence, the strong motivation to take Othello down, more apparent here than in Iago’s obsession with undermining the Moor.

Walker’s Othello is sleek and seething, a tinderbox awaiting a match, and Keeley Hawes is a fine Dessie, so lovely that her infatuated husband can’t divert his eyes from her face even as she sleeps. Eccleston, however, guns his motor too much when switching to smarmy scoundrel mode, keeping too little hidden.

Obviously, this is not “Othello” as originally written. What a difference four centuries make.

Not battlements, but a glass-walled high rise. Not Shakespeare’s verse, but dialogue screaming 2002 (“From now on, zero tolerance of racism,” newly installed commissioner Othello informs his men). Not a handkerchief that seems to incriminate Othello’s wife, but a silk robe, and of all things, DNA.

Instead of Iago, it’s Jago. Instead of serene Desdemona, it’s feistier Dessie, who keeps her rich daddy but is now a journalist. Instead of Iago’s wife, Emilia, it’s his girlfriend, and Dessie’s loyal friend, Lulu (Rachael Stirling). Instead of Cassio, it’s policeman Michael Cass (Richard Coyle), the guileless hunk set up by Jago to be Othello’s foil when he wrongly judges his wife guilty of adultery. Instead of Roderigo, it’s Alan Roderick (Del Synnott), a white cop implicated in the black suspect’s murder.

And not Shakespeare, of course, but Davies, a very talented scenarist whose outstanding British TV credits range from “House of Cards” and “Mother Love” to “A Rather English Marriage” and “Take a Girl Like You.”

As he did the villainous Francis Urquhart in “House of Cards,” Davies has Jago copy Richard III and speak directly to the audience with dark wit, sharing his deceit with these outsiders. Noting his success in baiting a trap for Othello, he tells the camera smugly: “How easily he slides into it.”

Too easily, in fact.

Ah, there’s the rub, for in stripping back so much of the original story--its characters, rhythms and prose--Davies so severely alters the context of “Othello” that it narrows here into something of a standard cop movie. Which would be fine. Except viewing it that way, one can’t believe that this tough urban cop, Othello, could be this gullible and manipulated like a puppet on a string by so transparent a villain.

Racial politics notwithstanding, so much for zero tolerance.

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“Othello” will be shown tonight at 9 on KCET. The network has rated it TV-14-LSV (may be unsuitable for children under 14, with special advisories for coarse language, sexuality and violence).

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.