TV REVIEW : ‘Back Home’: Piecing Together a Family After War

It’s hard to find any benefits of World War II. Some people figured, well, hell, Hitler put the Germans to work. And Mussolini got the trains running on time.

“Back Home,” a poignant little film that airs on the Disney Channel at 8 tonight, anguishes over some of the wretched old social mores that were ripped apart by the war and then pieced together but in a bright new pattern.

The director is Piers Haggard, who also did the heralded “Pennies from Heaven” series for British TV with Bob Hoskins.

The story focuses on one upper-crusted English family but the lessons are universal. Thirteen-year-old Rusty (played with bounce and sensitivity by Glendale actress Hayley Carr) spent five years with relatives in the States avoiding German bombs. She is full of reckless American spirit and can’t adjust to the rigidity of the English boarding school order, which is horrified by her “OK” slang and her penchant for speaking when not spoken to.

Peggy (Hayley Mills, in a touching turn) tries to cope with her daughter and likewise with a husband who comes back from the war and demands his old world back. But Peggy learned reliance through the war. She’s not the little missy any more.