“Once and Again”: After fading a bit in my estimation, turning for a time into more of a teen romance — all hurried assignations and heavy breathing — than an adult drama, this first-year ABC show is coming back around, making good on its early promise as an intelligently observed slice of contemporary life.
Cases in point are the next two, connected episodes (9 p.m. Mondays, WLS-Ch. 7), which executive producers Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (“thirtysomething”) take turns directing. Without going into drama-killing detail, a crisis in the family of Lily (Sela Ward) prompts an exceptionally well-crafted examination of the thickness–indeed, murkiness–of family relationships.
There are elements of this show that could be dismissed as “soap opera,” to be sure. But the patient accumulation of detail and the careful digging beneath surfaces gives it, to my mind, something more like the scope of a finely wrought novel about family life, one that unfolds before us weekly in eloquent chapters.
Kismet, or what? Two cable channels debut daily live programs Monday. VH1’s 90-minute “The Daily One” (working title) kicks off its music-centric mission at 1 p.m. “Lifetime Live” (11 a.m.) will run an hour daily and share the cable channel’s focus on women’s issues.
