BRILLIANT 'POLITICIAN'S WIFE' A TRUE PBS 'MASTERPIECE'.

Byline: Michael Blowen Boston Globe

"The Politician's Wife," a two-parter beginning at 9 tonight on PBS and concluding next week at the same time, is one of the best dramas the "Masterpiece Theatre" series ever has produced.

The title, like nearly everything else in this brilliant, incisive political potboiler, is well-nigh perfect. The use of the possessive politician and the "wife" appellation suggests that the woman's identity is subsumed completely by her husband and his career.

Flora Matlock, the dutiful wife of the title, is married to Duncan Matlock, an important Conservative Party minister in the British Parliament. She takes care of their two children, serves sherry in the parlor and smiles admiringly at her husband as if on cue. Her life is his.

But, in screenwriter Paula Milne's unerring script, everything is not as it seems. The most honorable Duncan Matlock isn't as honorable as he appears. The devoted father and husband and the kingdom's conservative defender of family values has been indulging his sexual appetite outside his marriage. In fact, the oleaginous descendant of Michael Douglas' Gordon Gecko from "Wall Street" has been carrying on with a young "research assistant" for more than a year. Of course, all of this is news to Flora, protector of home, hearth and her husband's political reputation. Duncan reassures her that his sexual indiscretion was a one-time fling and begs her for forgiveness and, more important, political support - stiff upper lip and that sort of thing. Her husband's various advisers, including Flora's father, gather to offer political advice without any regard for the personal consequences of their actions. Flora is expected to act in the timid manner of generations of political wives. She's supposed to sacrifice everything for the good of her husband's career and the continuation of power for the Conservative Party. That's her role.

But as she slowly discovers, her husband, on top of everything else, is a liar. He's been carrying on for some time and he likes his sex rough. Perhaps not as rough as his wife gives him while simultaneously avenging his deceit and reviving her own life.

The artistic brilliance of "The Politician's Wife" comes from the tacit agreement between screenwriter Paula Milne and star Juliet Stevenson that Flora is never to be seen as a hopeless victim. When she begins to use the same cunning duplicity on her husband that he uses on her and his constituency, the story builds into a series of marvelous ironies.

Milne has integrated some wonderfully subtle wit and sharp details into the familiar story. The first meeting between Duncan and his chief of staff is held, appropriately enough, in the men's urinal. And as Flora is trying to cope with the devastation of her husband's indiscretion, he's in the kitchen discussing strategy and eating vanilla ice cream right out of the container.

Stevenson, high-cheekboned and blond, plays Flora Matlock as if born to the part. In a role that easily could be overplayed, she underdoes it every time. In one sequence, she puts her head down on her son's bunk bed and listens to a tape of her husband and his lover's sex talk through a Walkman. The sense of isolation and grief is made palatable and poignant through Stevenson's admirable restraint. Later, after deciding to take her husband on at his own game, she sits at her mirror applying lipstick as if it were warpaint. And in her case it is. The physical transformation is stunning. Stevenson's Flora goes from a rather dowdy, conservative dresser to a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Lauren Bacall once she lets loose.

While I generally respect Pulitzer Prize-winning host Russell Baker's introductions, his work here is a bit misleading. He alludes to the present scandals at Buckingham Palace among Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Camilla Parker-Bowles as evidence that "The Politician's Wife" may have its roots firmly planted in fact. Yet, what distinguishes the fiction is that it goes beyond the restraints of history to personalize the political.