Cather’s Paean to Prairie Values

Tabloids belch smelly gossip and innuendo. Newscasts banner misery and mayhem. TV movies spew sex crimes and gory murders.

Not to worry. The God of good television answers your prayers Sunday with “O Pioneers!,� a lovely rendition of Willa Cather’s reverential novel about the land and people of rural Nebraska near the turn of the century.

What a bracing reprieve from rot. With so much smoggy negativism choking the neighborhood, how refreshing to turn the corner and inhale the fresh, clean air and life-affirming values of this “Hallmark Hall of Fame� production on CBS.

Breathe deeply.

Airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 2 and 8, “O Pioneers!� benefits from the luminous presence of Jessica Lange, sweeping, wind-rustled cornhusker vistas and a resolve by producer-director Glenn Jordan not only to capture the tone and spirit of Cather but also to speak with her voice. You hear it in Robert W. Lenski’s script.

“What I felt stirring in the long grass was the future,� says Alexandra Bergson (Lange). Her vision, tenacity, hard work and leadership have made a crop-lush, fertile oasis from the rugged, almost-foreboding patch of prairie on which she, her three brothers and their struggling Swedish parents once lived so bleakly in a log house.

After honoring her father’s death-bed plea to stay with the land, that young woman of an earlier time is now a person of means, living luxuriously in a large, graceful frame house while squabbling with her dullish, ungrateful oldest brothers and envisioning a glorious future for their head-strong youngest brother.

Although “O Pioneers!� acutely captures the punishing harshness of the prairie, where the land at times seems almost at war with the farmers who work it, there’s a wistful, dreamy quality to this story, reflecting Cather’s selective approach to realism. Reveling in the surrounding greenery, Alexandra’s young friend, Marie, exudes with a sigh: “I think I could worship the trees if I didn’t have the church.�

When Marie says this, you want to be there, too, worshiping beside her in this ethereal setting. However, a terrible tragedy will intervene, ripping the serenity and testing Alexandra’s almost inhuman capacity for forgiveness.

Although the smallness of the screen narrows the panorama, filming in Nebraska gives “O Pioneers!� a grand look, and Jordan masterfully contrasts the material richness of Alexandra’s present life with the blip on the hard landscape where she and her family once lived.

David Strathairn, Tom Aldredge, Reed Diamond, Anne Heche, Leigh Lawson and Heather Graham give nice support to Lange, who is so believable as Alexandra, so subtly emotional and within herself, that she seems almost to have had a mind meld with the character she plays.

Typically Cather, Alexandra is a survivor, an old-fashioned heroine possessing the strength and courage to face the future. It’s the kind of positive reinforcement you rarely receive from TV these days.

BLEEPERS CREEPERS: Congratulations to KCBS-TV Channel 2 and Tritia Toyota (a rare anchor who also occasionally functions as a legitimate reporter) for having the wherewithal to acquire a copy of the infamous Gennifer Flowers tape from the Star and submit it to an expert for analysis.

Played by the Star at a Flowers press conference Monday, this was the tape that she maintained would support her allegation that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton had a 12-year affair with her. Even a casual viewer could tell that the portions played for the press had gaps and fuzzed-over areas.

KCBS gave its copy of the tape to expert Anthony J. Pellicano, who concluded on camera that it had been tampered with. He later told The Times that the Flowers tape was “selectively edited.� Thus, it is unworthy of being considered evidence of anything.

Except, perhaps, the dishonesty of the Star or Flowers, or both.

Incidentally, on some televised excerpts of the Flowers press conference, a person could be heard turning this large circus into an even larger circus by shouting questions at Flowers, apparently from the back of the room. He asked if she was sleeping “with any other presidential candidates.� He asked if she’d been in a “threesome.� He also said something to Flowers about condoms.

After bravely attempting to maintain her straight-faced demeanor as a Serious Person Doing the Right Thing, even Flowers finally cracked up.

No wonder. The questioner, as it turns out, was no journalist. He was none other than that man about town known as Stuttering John, bizarre sideman and put-on artist for radio/TV shock jock Howard Stern. His assignment from Stern is to corner celebrities and ask them outrageous questions (he once ambushed Anthony Quinn outside a Manhattan restaurant and asked him on camera about his bowel movements). That makes him about as legitimate as the Star.

Large circus, larger circus--what’s the difference? The point is that Stuttering John’s presence at the Flowers press conference was somehow fitting. He was the perfect exclamation point for a burlesque media event. This time he belonged.