PBS' 'DEATH' IS A BIT STIFF.

Byline: DAVID KRONKE TV Critic

TWO YEARS AFTER his 1955 death, James Agee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his autobiographical novel ``A Death in the Family.'' Those who approach Monday night's ``Masterpiece Theatre American Collection'' adaptation of his book may rightly wonder: Since when did the Pulitzer committee start honoring such simpering writing?

Answer: It didn't. Tonight's disappointments lie solely with those adapting Agee's heartfelt work, an achingly, meticulously observed, virtually internal account of an unremarkable family's grief-stricken reaction to tragedy. Agee crafted an almost procedural examination of mourning in which prosaic qualities were trumped by his expansive insights into each character; lacking those internal monologues, the film version is just prosaic.

In terms of plotting, not much happens: In 1915 Knoxville, Jay (John Slattery), an upright father and husband, is called away on a possible family emergency, then is killed in an auto mishap on his return. Mary (Annabeth Gish), a pious woman intuitively attuned to her family's needs, learns the awful news and, as the family gathers, informs her son Rufus (Agee's doppelganger - it's his middle name - played by Austin Wolff). (A younger daughter has been consigned in Mom's womb in the film.) All prepare for and attend the funeral, presided over by a coldly officious priest.

Agee's finely wrought prose could scarcely be transformed and compressed into credible dialogue, but darned if screenwriter Robert Lenski doesn't try. A resonant description of family men watering their lawns in the evening that opens the book is awkwardly shoehorned into a sequence in which Mary's brother describes his painting of same.

Director Gil Cates, who recently successfully adapted Donald Margulies' play ``Collected Stories'' for PBS, has, with so many psyches to mine and emotions to juggle, a much trickier job here. He has created a prim, elegant production that does a credible job realizing Agee's characters; Kathleen Chalfant's spinster Aunt Hannah makes a particularly vivid leap from page to screen. But he simply can't capture the emotions roiling beneath their surfaces and the result is curiously unmoving.

Key moments, such as when Mary learns unequivocally that her husband is dead or when she tells Rufus of the tragedy the next morning, are bereft in power (Gish may not have been up to her assignment). The film's gravest misstep, however, is its tonal approach to its conclusion, a wallow in sentimentality where Agee was tough-minded. ``A Death in the Family'' has the handsome burnish of a labor of love, but that doesn't make it any less misguided.

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - Two and one half stars

What: ``Masterpiece Theatre American Collection'' adaptation of James Agee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about family tragedy, starring Annabeth Gish, John Slattery, Austin Wolff, James Cromwell.

Where: KCET (Channel 28).

When: 9 p.m. Monday.