Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 5, 1990 TAG: 9005050435
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Wire Reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Filmed in Chicago at Harpo Studios, where Winfrey also does her syndicated talk show, the series is about the lives of big-city blacks in 1967. It has a lot of things going for it, particularly Winfrey's acting.
She's eminently believable as the lead character, Mattie Michael, a wise, steady single woman to whom fate has dealt a few hard knocks, but who faces life with dignity and a certain down-home grace.
The show's other pluses: an optimistic view of life, a fine ensemble cast and David Shire's sprightly, lovely no-words theme song that verges close to Bach in its rendition by the fine a capella group, Take Six.
(A first-rate singer and composer, Oscar Brown Jr., also lurks in the cast as Jessie, the husband of the neighborhood busybody.)
Co-written by Earl Hamner, who did "The Waltons," the premiere of "Brewster Place" was a gentle lesson on the need, after misfortune strikes, to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again, preferably in a new direction. The show's future episodes are going to need a bit more bite and true grit if the series is to make its way in this wicked world, a world in which the new buzz phrase of networks is "get weird," as in "Twin Peaks."
"Brewster Place," airing Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. before moving to its permanent spot at the same time Wednesday (on Channel 13 in the Roanoke viewing area), is about an idyllic past where times were often hard, but choices seemed clearer and fundamental cultural values almost always triumphed. Brewster Place itself is a black neighborhood in a Northern city.
The key players include Winfrey as Mattie Michael, a single parent who bears the emotional scars of a son who jumped bail and in the process cost Mattie her home and savings. She worked as a beautician at the start of the series, but viewers found out that she had no formal training in cosmetology. Save for work as a domestic, her job prospects are dim because of her lack of education and skills that could lead to, say, a secretary's job.
What Mattie Michael has is determination, integrity and a capacity to dream and to excite others to dream. The tension between the need to imagine a better future and the walling-in that comes with the kinds of emotional bruises Michael bears are at the heart of the series.
When she was fired from her hairdresser's job, her best friend, Etta Mae (Brenda Pressley), urged a big change - becoming her partner in an Italian restaurant. Etta Mae had a beau who would loan her half the money.
But Mattie, with all her strength, couldn't bring herself to make such a dramatic move. She had a nest egg that she'd saved in recent years, but she couldn't bring herself to bet it on herself in a business venture since she was financially ruined before by her own son.
Etta Mae isn't embarrassed that her friend says she's dreaming. "Damn right," she snapped. "And you look to me like you could use a good dream."
Viewers knew, almost from the start, that Mattie would see the light and take a chance. But, of course, that was after other characters were established and she helped her widowed cousin and his three kids, all fresh in from Arkansas, move into their new Brewster Place apartment.
At the heart of the enjoyment for viewers is Winfrey's performance. As an actress, she is not able to communicate more than one emotion or idea at a time - unlike, say, Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo seeming to admire the cut of a suspect's blazer while he is actually measuring the man's intellect with what seems like flattery.
In a scene in the premiere, Etta Mae forced Mattie to look in a mirror and acknowledge how closed off she had become. Winfrey added some physical business - hugging herself, looking away, lifting and then choking off her voice - that was about as good as dramatic acting in weekly television ever gets. Pressley played that scene for all it was worth, too.
But it's the era that's really celebrated. The year of 1967 is likely to be seen by historians as a special time in the sweep of the African-American experience. It was two years after voting rights legislation was signed into law. It was before the assassination of Martin Luther King. A society that had attempted to limit aspirations and had cruelly smothered potential in many of its black citizens was being forced to open some doors of opportunity. It was a time of excitement and possibility.
The period is re-created with imagination from the opening credits. The opening is purposely old-fashioned - right down to looking like 1960s television. Characters are seen in a succession of neighborhood street scenes. When the name of the actor or actress appears in print on the screen, the camera zeroes in on the face of the character the actor plays. The character then looks right into the camera and smiles or winks. The technique is so dated that it makes you feel as if you are actually watching a television show in the 1960s.
But that's a matter of style. And smart as the style is, it is the substance of "Brewster Place" as a dramatic chronicling of the black urban experience that makes the series potentially culturally significant television.
by CNB