We have good books, too

...StudeCe li a Wren vant a two-dimensional, prejudiced social climber...

...Cherry Jones pulls off atre" opener, the camera moves slowly and classier than it really is-as "Master- less of a coup with the role of Mrs...

...And remember the tele- fleshed out the personality of Cora's ile and open-ended...

...Pounder) and other Hughes characters, but left Mrs...

...dose of sentimentality...

...inspires the American Collection's initial Lauder perfume ad...

...Using Peacock's screenplay and emWE HAVE GOOD BOOKS, TOO phasizing quiet scenes of domesticity, 'Masterpiece Theatre' goes American director Deborah M. Pratt has eked Hughes's tale out to a rather dawdling two hours...

...As a fic- Collection's credit sequence-one whose Family, among others...

...least feel something...

...Launched the sum of her circumstances-unmar- cally from the usual prelude to Russell in January 1971 with a twelve-part epic ried mother, exploited servant-at least Baker...

...Born into the only African- It's almost as if the creative team at core broadcast on October 29...

...A love letter waxes This fall the cosily middlebrow PBS se- offering is, perhaps, not one of literature's absurdly eloquent with statements like "I ries finally visits home turf with the top-drawer masterpieces either...

...heretofore have bounded off to a smug"Masterpiece Theatre" has long exem- In PBS's version, however, the high- ly confident start as the camera pans plified that deplorable American snob- octane talents of actress Regina Taylor over an aristocratic library, luxuriating bishness that values British culture over (best known from her work on the series across leather-bound volumes to the trithe homegrown stuff...

...The work that seems to have been lifted from an Estee holds no monopoly on literary brilliance...

...by John Williams (Yo-Yo Ma plays the circles holds, a little bitterly, that the Studevant, the way she draws in a sharp cello) while cursive-inked pages fade in Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit could have breath while passing biscuits around the and out, stamped occasionally by siltransferred successfully to Broadway family's dinner table-Taylor gives Cora houetted Americana-a paddle boat, a had playwright or director been British...

...Some deep-seated inferiority complex plosion is convincing in a way that it isn't In the traditional "Masterpiece Theon our part makes British art seem smarter in Hughes's story...

...And in adaptations of Yankee works, scheduled "Cora Unashamed" are an extended set- the aftermath of a child's death, the camto air over the next three years...

...Suggesting battened- fare for the King's Supper...

...Episodes in nated over the past few years by U.K.- down rebellion through carefully guard- the American collection, by contrast, birthed imports like The Blue Room...

...Unfortunately, she and her nglophobes rejoice...

...hnstin,js shc,F r,in r.u ' (tier...

...It's a vision of litcasts, during the 1995-96 season, of that erature, perhaps, that solicits the opinion modem chef d'oeuvre, "Prime Suspect...

...tional character, Cora is little more than sepia-tinged fadeaways diverge drastiWhat took them so long...

...The first will see you in the cornfield...

...ccnnmcmwrajm~i~, .v.ine_or or are they not...

...Love scenes take A "Masterpiece Theatre" have rather than with adaptations of Oliver place in a breeze-swept cornfield that acknowledged that Britain Twist and Anna Karenina...

...Masterpiece Theatre" episodes about Sir Winston Churchill's ancestors, until her final transformation...

...This mindset has "I'll Fly Away") turn Cora into a smol- umphant strains of J.J...

...You can sense a Lark, Esmeralda Santiago's Almost a Studevant, until that matriarch brings similar hesitancy from the American Woman, and James Agee's A Death in the tragedy upon the household...

...I,A-t c4 of the audience rather than dictates ex Full disclosure: Mystery-addict that I _c>mmUmar...

...Commonweal 2 5 October 20, 2000...

...After But I cheerfully acknowledge that such collaborators have also added a heavy thirty years, the creators of police procedurals belong on "Mystery...

...Screenwriter Ann Peacock has lection's sequence, literature seems fragmasterpieces...

...I will see debut of the American Collection-nine fourteen pages of Langston Hughes's you where the blue grass grows...

...In the American Colentertaining television, but are they really freckles...

...Are these works masterpieces am, I found "Prime Suspect" irresistible...

...The Col- up for the fifteenth and concluding one, in era dwells mawkishly on an empty chair lection kicks off on October 25 with which the personality of the eponymous and an empty swing, as if Charles Dick"Cora Unashamed," based on the short heroine undergoes an astonishing meta- ens were playing cinematographer...

...1111 c l,no .3t: cathedra...

...Mouret's "Fanrecently reigned on Broadway, domi- dering dreamer...

...story by Langston Hughes (with an en- morphosis...

...Stude- over a book-lined study where literapiece Theatre" has often demonstrated vant, but then what can you do with lines ture is seen as a fait accompli, an acceswith panache...

...ed expression and movement-the way float into existence to a wistful melody (Common wisdom in nonprofit theater she holds her head while answering Mrs...

...Future American family in a tiny Iowa town, PBS, unsure that American works will programs will be devoted to Henry Cora spends the years of the Depression really clear the masterpiece bar, has emJames's The American (slated for Janu- working as maid to the Studevant family, phasized emotion, so that viewers will at ary 2001), Willa Cather's The Song of the suffering the whims of the imperious Mrs...

...such magnetism that the maid's final ex- farm, the Statue of Liberty...

...The novels of Joanna Trol- like "The only thing I prayed for when I sory to a successful lifestyle, like a satin lope (The Choir, etc...

...You decide...

...may inspire superbly was pregnant was that she wouldn't have smoking jacket...