TV REVIEW : ‘Mother’ Re-Creates Golden Age TV Drama

A new version of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1954 teleplay “The Mother” reintroduces not only a pioneer of quality television writing but re-creates the very tone and style of intimate Golden Age TV drama.

Starring Anne Bancroft as a newly widowed, 66-year-old mother struggling to find dignity and self-worth in a chilly world and Joan Cusack as her meddlesome daughter, the production is a compelling example of vintage Chayefsky dramatizing ordinary people in unadorned terms.

A BBC production, shot in New York’s Astoria Studios for public TV’s “Great Performances,” the story’s revival accompanies a surge of interest in Chayefsky, including his “Collected Works” (published this month) and the first Chayefsky biography, Shaun Considine’s “Mad as Hell” (published last August).

The teleplay’s remake, still set in 1954 Gotham, is an ensemble achievement, featuring an understated performance from Adrian Pasdar as Bancroft’s son-in-law and a crusty turn by Stephen Lang as her bedeviled seamstress boss.

Simon Curtis’ direction delicately mirrors a frightened, aging woman’s burning will to be independent. A shattering, four-minute scene with Bancroft on the phone talking to her daughters is a riveting, heroic moment. And when Bancroft, fighting the slippage of time, cries out to to her family, “Is this what it all comes to--an old woman parceling out the old furniture in her house?,” it’s classic Chayefsky.

It’s refreshing to look again at one of his simple, realistic teleplays (in the grain of “Marty” and “The Bachelor Party”) and be reminded of television’s other world.

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“The Mother” airs tonight, 10-11 p.m., on Channel 28, KCET.