No Easy Solutions Here

By Richard Zoglin

SHOW: LAUREL AVENUE

TIME: JULY 10, 11 (DEBUT), HBO

THE BOTTOM LINE: A weekend in the life of one troubled Minnesota family is dramatized with honesty and compassion.

For a medium so concerned with "family values," TV has been treating the family pretty badly of late. With rare exceptions (notably ABC's Roseanne), sitcom clans are stitched together with baling wire and bad jokes. Serious family dramas (Family, A Year in the Life) have all but disappeared from prime time, and the few recent offerings have been too distracted by other matters -- skewering small-town life in Picket Fences; cheerleading for the rights of autistic children in Life Goes On -- to pay much attention to the way families really interrelate. In this context, Laurel Avenue, an HBO mini-series airing in two 90-minute segments this month, is almost a breakthrough.

The drama revolves around Jake and Maggie Arnett, a middle-aged, middle- class black couple living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and their six children (by various marriages) and their assorted spouses and kids. If the characters and relationships are a bit hard to sort out at times, the problems they face aren't. A 15-year-old boy is falling in with the wrong crowd on the streets. A single mother tries to put her life back together after drug rehabilitation. The manager of a clothing store owned by the Mob is lured into a steroid-fencing scheme by an old friend. A high school basketball star is benched for a bad attitude, ruining his chance to impress a college scout. All the action takes place over a single weekend; there are crises and confrontations, small changes but no big conclusions.

Superbly acted by a cast of nonstars and tautly directed by Carl Franklin (One False Move), Laurel Avenue is honest but not exploitative, affirmative without sappy TV "uplift." The basketball star, after a stormy date with the Arnetts' teenage daughter, suddenly draws a gun and points it at his own head. "I blew it," he cries, then wearily puts the pistol down. (No easy violence here.) The troubled single mother, after being abused by her ex- boyfriend, is so depressed that she can't face a job interview. "You can do anything you want to do," her father urges. "No, I can't," she replies. (No easy pep-talk solutions here.) Yet when she arrives stoned at a family gathering, her relatives overcome their dismay and rally around her. In Laurel Avenue, people may have trouble looking out for themselves, but they look out for one another. Like a family.