TV REVIEWS : ‘Path’: Saga Not the Usual ‘Masterpiece’

At first glance, “The Cinder Path” looks wonderfully like “Masterpiece Theatre” of old: grandly mounted British period drama, capable acting, splendid costumes, meticulous attention to historical detail.

Vera Brittain’s autobiographical, deeply intelligent “Testament of Youth” comes to mind, like “The Cinder Path” an Edwardian saga that bleeds into World War I, with that mindless slaughter becoming a profound coming-of-age experience for its young protagonist.

Unlike that worthy story, however, there’s much less in “The Cinder Path” than meets the eye, intelligence not being this three-parter’s strength. An adaptation of a novel by the prolific best-selling English author Catherine Cookson, it’s lovely to look at and a bit of fun if your taste runs to thin, predictable melodrama thick with scum, tumultuous misery and a carnage count that starts even before the men hit the trenches. But meaty “Masterpiece Theatre” of yore? Hardly.

The year is 1913, the setting a prosperous farm in England’s bleak Northumberland, where the cruel, tyrannical master (Tom Bell) uses a cinder path to administer sadistic punishment to farmhands. “Life’s more a cinder path than a bed of roses,” he tells his son, Charlie (Lloyd Owen), whom he publicly taunts and ridicules.

Before you know it, though, this heathen’s own life comes to an untimely end, leaving poor Charlie in charge and at the mercy of a snarling blackmailer (Antony Byrne) and Victoria Chapman (Catherine Zeta Jones), the gorgeous but predatory daughter of a neighboring estate owner. “The Cinder Path” is worth a tune-in if only to watch the misbehaving Victoria curl her upper lip.

Adapted by Alan Seymour and directed by Simon Langton, “The Cinder Path” has some affecting moments when Charlie goes to war and finds on the smoky, mud-slogged killing fields of France the courage he lacked back home. Yet even this plot turn is a cliche, affirming that, like the cinder path itself, watching “Masterpiece Theatre” these days is no bed of roses.

* “The Cinder Path” premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15, and at 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24. It also airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday on KOCE-TV Channel 50.