Poetry On The Prairie

By Richard Zoglin

LONESOME DOVE

CBS, beginning Feb. 5, 9 p.m. EST

A pair of former Texas Rangers, now tending a small ranch in South Texas, suddenly pick up stakes and launch a cattle drive to Montana. Why? A friend has convinced them that there are big opportunities up north. What's more, says one, "I want to see that country before the bankers and lawyers all get it." But if the truth be told, the long trek -- initiated by an almost chance remark, beset by terrible hardships -- seems a futile whim.

From a commercial standpoint, futility might also describe the CBS mini- series Lonesome Dove. TV westerns went out of vogue nearly two decades ago, and remain the medium's most stubbornly unfashionable genre. Lengthy mini- series too are at a low ebb of popularity, especially after last fall's disappointing War and Remembrance. Will crowds of viewers really mosey to the set for a four-night, eight-hour saga about cowboys on the trail?

Mebbe not. Yet Lonesome Dove rides rings around the overstuffed soap operas that usually pass for "epics" along Broadcast Row. Larry McMurtry's fat novel has been brought to TV -- by writer Bill Wittliff and director Simon Wincer -- with sweep, intelligence and sheer storytelling drive. Firmly anchoring the film is Robert Duvall's moving performance as the wry, philosophical ex-lawman Augustus McCrae. Tommy Lee Jones provides stern counterpoint as McCrae's partner, Woodrow F. Call. Dozens of finely etched characters surround them: a roguish ex-Ranger turned gambler (Robert Urich); a prostitute looking for escape (Diane Lane); a wimpy sheriff (Chris Cooper) searching for his runaway wife; and a lost love (Anjelica Huston) whom McCrae locates on the plains of Nebraska. Not to mention sadistic outlaws, vicious Indians and other disasters, natural and man-made, on the road to Montana.

In the mode of westerns like The Wild Bunch, Lonesome Dove notes the passing of an era. "Durn people makin' towns everywhere," says McCrae. "It's our fault too. We chased out the Indians . . . hung all the good bandits . . . killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with." But Lonesome Dove is surprisingly nonrevisionist in its picture of the West. The good guys still perform stunning heroics with six- shooters, and Indians are faceless villains who whoop when they ride. Yet in its everyday details -- the dust and the spit, the casual conversations about whoring, the pain of a man getting a mesquite thorn removed from his thumb -- this may be the most vividly rendered old West in TV history.

There are scenes of harrowing violence and terrible brutality, made more shocking by their matter-of-fact presentation. A hanging on the trail is so swift and morally disturbing that the unsuspecting viewer is left breathless. Suffusing it all is McCrae's stoic resignation in the face of misfortune. "Yesterday's gone; we can't get it back," he tells a man grieving over three murdered bodies. "You go on with your diggin', and I'll tidy up the dead." In its terse prairie poetry, Lonesome Dove celebrates not just the old West but also the men who could witness the randomness and cruelty of life and accept it.