Florid Fiction, Bruising Fact

By Richard Zoglin

SHOW: QUEEN

TIME: FEB. 14, 16, 18, 9 P.M. E.S.T., CBS

SHOW: FALLEN CHAMP

TIME: FEB. 12, 9 P.M. E.S.T., NBC

THE BOTTOM LINE: Alex Haley's tribute to his family sinks in suds; a documentary about Mike Tyson rises on real life.

Sixteen years have passed since ABC's landmark telecast of Roots. In TV time, that is nearly a millennium. Back in 1977, the mini-series was a fresh and vital form. The Big Three networks still had a virtual monopoly on the TV audience. And an old-fashioned, multigenerational family saga disguised as a history lesson about slavery could seem like a major contribution to racial understanding.

Queen is not exactly a sequel to Roots (Roots: The Next Generations, all but forgotten, aired in 1979), but it is a fitting bookend. It is based on Alex Haley's account of the other side of his family, namely his paternal grandmother, who was the illegitimate daughter of a white plantation owner and his slave mistress. When Haley died last February, he was in the process of dictating the story to screenwriter David Stevens. Stevens has now fashioned it into a six-hour drama that John Erman (An Early Frost) has directed and CBS, with much fanfare, will present next week.

Queen has poignant moments, thanks largely to Halle Berry's delicate, deeply felt performance in the title role. But the mini-series seems both dated and distressingly up to date. It bears less resemblance to Haley's earlier epics than to a 1990s woman-in-jeopardy TV film, or maybe a Danielle Steel soap opera. Queen is the classic innocent heroine who embarks on a picaresque journey in which evil and injustice lurk around every corner.

Born on a benevolent plantation, she is raised alongside the master's legitimate daughter. But after the Civil War, she must leave and fend for herself. Light-skinned enough to pass for white, she is caught between two worlds. A white man proposes marriage, then rapes her when she reveals her parentage; a black woman, responding to her plea for food, throws a plateful on the ground: "Eat that, white bitch!" She has a child by a black laborer (Dennis Haysbert) who walks out on her. She moves in with a pair of religious-fanatic spinsters who try to take away her baby. Later, bitter and near a breakdown, she is thrown into a mental institution full of raving loonies out of The Snake Pit.

Queen eventually triumphs, of course, thanks to her pluck and the love of a good man (Danny Glover). All of which would be more inspiring if it weren't for the florid melodrama and tinhorn dialogue. The villainous racists do everything but twirl their mustaches. The shallow plantation wives are cliches of another sort: "If it were not for the slave girls," says one, excusing the menfolk's sexual dalliances, "we women would have to submit to our husbands whenever they feel . . . healthy." The young Queen expresses her romantic outlook in sappy lines like "I want to marry a prince on a white horse!"

Roots had melodramatic excesses too, but they were transcended by the sweep and emotional resonance of the family saga. And the TV landscape has changed a lot. While the fictional mini-series seems stuck in a creative dead end, nonfiction is flourishing. From finely crafted American Experience documentaries to the video verite of Cops and 48 Hours, dramatic artistry & seems to reside more in the sensitive shaping of reality than in the sentimental shams of fiction. Witness Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson.

The two-hour NBC movie is, surprisingly, not another "based-on-fact" TV drama, but a documentary using clips, interviews and some startling home-movie footage. Directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple (American Dream; Harlan County, U.S.A.), Fallen Champ is not overtly about race. But it could be the discordant final chapter of the Roots story.

Like Queen, Tyson grew up in a harshly segregated society (the Brownsville section of Brooklyn) and was taken in by a white father figure (trainer Cus D'Amato). Like Queen, Tyson had an emotional, childlike personality (in one clip he weeps in anxiety before a match at the Junior Olympics). His encounters with the outside world, like Queen's, leave him bitter and disillusioned. Says Tyson about the various promoters, managers and other gold diggers who fought over him: "My philosophy was, like, people basically suck."

Tyson's story, of course, has a tragic ending: the heavyweight champion was convicted of raping a contestant at the 1991 Miss Black America Pageant and is serving six years in federal prison. Fallen Champ recounts that notorious case with evenhanded sensitivity and an absence of polemical heat. Queen is overwrought but ultimately comforting; Fallen Champ is understated and as punishing as a left jab.