When Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City shows up on “Masterpiece” (formerly “Masterpiece Theatre”) wearing cameos and high collars, the jokes write themselves as easily as if Judi Dench were appearing in the life story of Doris Day. From the trailers for the coming Sex and the City movie, we can see that Ms. Cattrall, at 51, still has a body that could forge peace treaties. If there is a crime in her casting, it is that she has been forced to stand around in front of William Morris wallpaper in floor-length, high-waisted solid cottons.Ms. Cattrall is part of the cast of My Boy Jack (showing Sunday on most PBS stations; check local listings), a televised version of a stage play about Rudyard Kipling’s hard-headed, macho insistence that his fragile young son serve in World War I. As Kipling’s brazen American wife — is there really any other kind? — Ms. Cattrall suppresses her instincts for feline inflection. But no matter how hard she works to seem anxious or serious or miserable or bereaved, you can’t help thinking that whenever she is in the vicinity of a man in a uniform, she’s going to tell him she would sure as heck love to see his own Western front. What is she doing in this movie? Isn’t there a sale going on right now at a Neiman Marcus somewhere?
Still, Ms. Cattrall’s odd inclusion adds a spark and leaves you with something to talk about. Otherwise My Boy Jack is like a well-made hospital bed, all four corners too tightly tucked. It is hard to find much emotion in a movie that tries to wrench drama from an eye test. Kipling’s son, Jack, here played by the Harry Potter movies’ grown-up and gravitas-bearing Daniel Radcliffe, suffers from vision problems and ought to have been barred from the military, but he can’t help fulfilling his father’s ambition that he fight against German tyranny.
Things go badly; Jack goes missing; Kipling, played with Olympian restraint by David Haig (who also wrote the play and this script), must grapple with the guilt born of his too-pushy approach to parenthood. Most actors love scenes involving big, gushy Daniel Day-Lewis-style grapplings with conscience, but Mr. Haig seems as though he would rather be re-reading Bleak House. His screenplay is supposed to give us a sense of the emotionally withholding Edwardian mind-set Kipling embodied, but it is hard to imagine that in the thick of the worst imaginable tragedy Kipling turned to his wife and said, “We’ll manage.”
Productions of “Masterpiece” often work so hard to avoid the taint of melodrama that they come off seeming like high comedy. In an effort at poetry, one can only suppose, Jack, whose masculinity has always been under assault, is shown suffering a battlefield injury to the most intimate region of his anatomy. It is as hokey as if the actress playing his mother started reciting “There once was a man from Nantucket.”
Still, Kim Cattrall found many reasons to seize the role of Carrie Kipling, not least a life-long admiration for the British literary superstar. "He wrote a poem that I loved as a kid called 'The Way Through the Woods,'" says the actress, 51. "I read The Jungle Book, and my dad bought me Kim, because it was called Kim. Then I was shocked to find out someone with my name was a boy." Cattrall saw other reasons to sign on: "I had never played anyone who actually existed. I always was very excited by the whole imperialistic period of the 1890s and the turn of the last century," says Cattrall, who, though raised on Canada's Vancouver Island, was born in Liverpool, England. "It was very grand and romantic, then came crashing to a halt after the first World War."
A grand yet wistful tone permeates My Boy Jack, and Cattrall is a key agent. In her performance, she manifests grace, tenderness and firm resolve. For viewers who know her only as Samantha, Cattrall in My Boy Jack will be a revelation. Of course, Samantha isn't gone from her life. Sex and the City, though having finished its six-year HBO run in 2004, will vault to the big screen next month. Just two weeks after wrapping My Boy Jack last summer in Ireland and England, Cattrall was back home in New York to start filming the movie.
The film's May 30 opening is eagerly anticipated, especially by series devotees who wait to be convinced (while yearning to be) that a movie version was a good idea. "Even at this late date, you just hope that it works," Cattrall says. "But it was also that way with the series. There was always a feeling of 'I think we've gone too far' or 'I think we said too much' or 'I think we stayed too long'" - as the show's popularity and cultural impact proved otherwise.
Cattrall remembers being offered the part. "I sort of felt the heyday was coming to an end." That is, she had left her 30s behind her. "I thought if I did a television series, it would probably be as someone's mother in a recurring role." Reconciled to that career track, she was skittish about taking on the role of Samantha. "I didn't think I could play this vamp in her 40s. I didn't think I was up to it," she says. "Now I think: 'How ridiculous!'
"Then I met the other girls. They were all in their early 30s!" More trepidation. She took the leap anyway. "I thought, 'Well, OK! I might get laughed at. But here we go!'
My Boy Jack is on Sunday night on most PBS stations; check local listings.
