Christy. - television program reviews

National Review, April 4, 1994 by Matthew Scully

THE mid-season network replacements bring us at last a show dealing thoughtfully with religious themes. I had not read Christy, the 1967 Catherine Marshall novel on which this CBS show (premiering April 3) is based, but decided I should, seeing as how Avon Books has reissued it just for the occasion. Apparently the producers have it in mind to make this true story of a young Christian missionary a big TV event, a show daring enough to suggest that faith may not be such a bad thing after all.

The show is co-produced by Ken Wales, who spent 17 years trying valiantly to win the networks over to his idea; and Barney Rosenzweig, whose career path by contrast helps explain why viewers now yearn for wholesome stuff like Christy. Turns out it was Mr. Rosenzweig who gave us the old Daniel Boone show of the mid Sixties, the best show in the history of television... Well, okay, but anyway my favorite show, best viewed wearing a coon-skin cap with a rifle on your lap. But from there Mr. Rosenzweig went on to produce such fare as Charlie's Angels, Cagney & Lacey, and The Trials of Rosie O'Neill---in all of which one can find only a single consoling thought: Jaclyn Smith. His credits beyond that attest to the decline of TV heroes from the likes of Fess Parker as brave and reticent frontiersman to Sharon Gless as mouthy feminist lawyer. It was Cagney & Lacey, some will recall, that gave us television's first outright pro-abortion plot, the kind of pathbreaking political advocacy that earned Mr. Rosenzweig a "Good Guy Award" from the National Women's Political Caucus.

No entirely faithful adaptation of Christy was likely to rack up Good Guy Awards, even if the story itself has just the kind of powerful simplicity that makes for good shows. It opens as 19-year-old Christy Huddleston (modeled on Catherine Marshall's mother)journeys in the winter of 1912 to Cutter Gap, Tennessee, in the Great Smokies. She has heard of this miserable place from a Presbyterian minister out recruiting volunteers, deciding then and there to go help, leaving behind a well-to-do family in Asheville, North Carolina. "I didn't realize it then," she reflects in the first of many voiceovers drawn from the book, "but from the very first moment I saw them, the mountains were a source of peace and strength to me--always there to quiet my mind and satisfy my heart."

Arrived in Cutter Gap, Christy finds a wise mentor in Alice Henderson, the Quaker missionary who sees her through the trials of teaching 64 scraggly illiterates and living in the spartan squalor of the Tennessee highlands. There is feuding, bootlegging, crude medical superstition, seasonal bathing, not much church-going. Pigs lounge and snort under the floorboards of the church where classes are held. ("Them? Why, they's only hawgs, teacher!")

To this situation actress Kelly Martin brings just the right air of aghast innocence. In both novel and show, we follow her as she comes to admire and care for these folks, and without the least bit of pious condescension or social-worker sanctimony. With each discovery about their darker side, Miss Alice (a miscast Tyne Daly) is there to remind Christy that this after all is the point of their mission. In the book this theme is developed beautifully, Miss Alice slowly leading the young woman in her faith:

  You see, Christy, evil is real--and
  powerful. It has to be fought, not explained
  away, not fled. And God is against evil
  all the way. So each of us has to decide
  where we stand, how we're going to live
  our lives. We can try to persuade
  ourselves that evil doesn't exist; live for
  ourselves and wink at evil We can say that
  it isn't so bad after all, maybe even try to
  call it fun by clothing it in silks and
  velvets. We can compromise with it, keep
  quiet about it and say it isn't any of our
  business. Or we can work on God's side,
  listen for His orders or. strategy against
  the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and
  know that He can transform it.

In the show, the same scene comes out this way:

  You can't help her by dwelling in the
  darkness. We Friends believe it is better
  to seek the light within .... That light is
  of God. Those called to serve act
  fearlessly, according to the light. But it can't
  come to us unless we open our hearts to
  the griefs and pain all around us.

Even this latter sentiment is rare enough on entertainment TV, though predictable in its clouding of Miss Alice's Christian conviction with a more acceptably vague spirituality. It will be a test of the show to see whether little by little it drifts toward a New Age Christy finding lights within, or a New Deal Christy foreshadowing the great good works to come, or--worst-case scenario--a New Woman Christy bravely breaking down the sexist barriers of the time.

On the first two counts, at least, signs are hopeful (although one wonders why the show drops the prayer and patriotic song with which Catherine Marshall's Christy begins class). "Church ain't for us," says the local bootlegger (Mike Hickman as a very convincing "Bird's-Eye" Taylor). "Always been a sinner myself." Christy replies: "I'm a sinner, too! Everybody is. That's what the church is all about-- saving us sinners." Later we see her go to her favorite place in the mountains to pray: "Dear God. When I came here, maybe I was partly running off from home for fun and adventure. But I think you had something else in mind. What I'm trying to say is... if You can use me in this cove--well, here I am."