Centuries after Christopher Columbus, PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre” has discovered America too.
Public TV executives announced this week that, beginning in the 1999-2000 season, the venerable umbrella series will complement its steady diet of imported dramas (usually costume, almost always British) with nine long-form dramas made in the United States, based on works by U.S. authors.
“Mobil Masterpiece Theatre’s American Collection” will kick off, in little more than a year, with new versions of Willa Cather’s “The Song of the Lark,” Langston Hughes’ “Cora Unashamed” and, quite fittingly, Henry James’ “The American.” The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, WGBH, Mobil and producer Marian Rees’ A.L.T. Films all have a hand in the PBS project, and even Britain’s BBC will kick in some funding.
That’s wonderful news for fans of quality TV — but to those with long memories, all it really amounts to is a giant, and welcome, step backward.
Twenty years ago, in the late ’70s, Robert Geller produced for PBS a brilliant series called “American Short Story,” featuring such memorable, artistic dramatizations as Shelley Duvall in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and LeVar Burton in Richard Wright’s “Almos’ a Man.”
After that, beginning in 1982, PBS presented an even more ambitious homegrown anthology series: “American Playhouse.” The series, drained by lack of funding and member station support, has now dwindled to nothingness, but for more than a decade it was a vital, vibrant source of outstanding TV — adapting everything from Philip Roth’s “The Ghost Writer” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Who Am I This Time?” to televised versions of such stage hits as “Into the Woods” and “The Grapes of Wrath.”
For the last few years, though, there has been a dearth of homegrown TV drama on PBS. Its disappearance, like its reappearance, has little to do with viewer interest. “American Playhouse” lost support because, as the offerings got bigger, they also got bolder, offending certain provincial station executives.
Similarly, “Masterpiece Theatre” is now going American not just to honor its cultural heritage, but also because cable’s recently launched BBC Channel will siphon off many British costume dramas before they can get to PBS.
Whatever the reason, though, it’s a welcome change.