Savoring a tasty dramatic recipe

It seemed only fitting that a movie with a title like “Soul Food” would ride word-of-mouth endorsements to nearly $50 million at the box office back in 1997, and the good news is that although family matriarch Mama Joe is long gone, her spirit lives on in the Showtime drama of the same name.

“Soul Food,” the series, takes the wrapper off its fourth season tonight at 10 with more in the playful, passionate and sometimes painful lives of the three Joseph sisters.

The show -- with the film’s writer and director, George Tillman Jr. (“Barbershop”) still on board as an executive producer -- puts the strength and resiliency of family to the test against a raft of big-picture social issues and up-close relationship challenges, managing to keep things interesting in the process. Tonight’s episode, “All Together Alone,” is no exception.

Teri (Nicole Ari Parker) and new fiance Damon (Boris Kodjoe) are still the best-looking couple in America, but Damon appears to have a battle with the bottle brewing, and watching the his descent isn’t pretty.

Maxine (Vanessa Williams) and Kenny (Rockmond Dunbar), meanwhile, have a sizzling kitchen-counter encounter interrupted by their wide-eyed tweener son. Whoops. And then it happens again. Yikes.

Yet it’s Bird (Malinda Williams) who faces the most harrowing situation tonight. A former lover is dead-set on updating his credentials with her, but she’d like to keep this bit of news from hubby Lem (Darrin DeWitt Henson), thinking she can defuse the situation on her own and maybe save her jealous spouse from a murder rap at the same time.

But it’s quickly apparent that Bird is in way over her head, and when the stalker (her ex-high school math teacher, of all people) steps up his twisted and increasingly violent campaign, her days appear numbered.