TV Reviews : ‘Doubt’: Another Look at Von Stein Murder Case

Prime-time viewers are getting identical murder cases in duplicate and triplicate.

On Monday, ABC becomes the first of three networks to air a movie about convicted murderer Lawrencia Bembenek. And this weekend, NBC becomes the second network in three weeks to dramatize the bizarre Von Stein murder case.

Once was enough.

“Cruel Doubt” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday on Channels 4, 36 and 39, with NBC taking four hours to tell a story that CBS told more interestingly in two on April 26 with “Honor Thy Mother.”

This multiple-docudrama-variations-on-a-sensational-crime trend is nothing new for TV movies. It was only a few years ago, for example, that two networks aired separate accounts of the Schreuder murder case, which revolved around a family at least as dysfunctional as the Von Steins of “Honor Thy Mother” and “Cruel Doubt.”

Closely paralleling the Joe McGinniss book of the same name, “Cruel Doubt” is set in a small town in North Carolina where Lieth and Bonnie Von Stein are savagely beaten and stabbed in their bed by an unknown assailant while their teen-age daughter, Angela, is apparently asleep in another bedroom. Although Bonnie survives the attack, her 19-year-old son, Chris, who is away at college, becomes a prime suspect.

This is a complex and bizarre story. Blythe Danner is excellent as Bonnie, who stubbornly rejects the evidence against drug-addled Chris (convincingly played by Matt McGrath). And there is nice supporting work from Gwyneth Paltrow (Danner’s daughter) as Angela and Ed Asner as a shrewd defense attorney faced with representing a client he knows is guilty.

With John Gay’s script spanning a lengthy investigation and two trials, however, “Cruel Doubt” blurs and meanders tediously, especially after Part I, and Yves Simoneau’s pretentious direction becomes distracting.

“Cruel Doubt” covers more ground than “Honor Thy Mother,” but only laboriously.