ROBERTS GETS SERIOUS IN 'A TIME TO REMEMBER'.

Byline: Phillip Zonkel Staff Writer

EVERYBODY LOVES Doris Roberts' Emmy-winning turn as meddling matriarch Marie Barone on the popular television sitcom ``Everybody Loves Raymond,'' but you won't find any belly laughs in her poignant TV movie ``A Time to Remember.''

Airing at 8 tonight on the Hallmark Channel, the Thanksgiving drama follows Maggie Calhoun (Roberts) as she faces the loneliness and uncertainty created by early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

Maggie is a wealthy elitist who has spent much of her life looking askance at the different choices made by her daughters, Britt (Dana Delany), a gifted but struggling artist raising an infant son, and Valetta (Megan Gallagher), whose image of perfection conceals festering problems with her husband.

Maggie invites the family over for Thanksgiving, but tension and conflict obstruct a warm homecoming. Britt and Valetta argue over the cause of their strained relationship, and Maggie is distant, forced and awkward with Britt and her son.

But Britt quickly notices something is askew when her mother starts forgetting things and talking about her deceased husband as if he's still living.

Maggie, who has been diagnosed as being in the early stages of the disease, is frightened by Alzheimer's encroachment and the possibility she may lose her past, future and dignity at the same time.

It's a dramatic change of pace for Roberts, 74, who was eager to jump into the noncomedic role.

``She's a very complicated character. She appears too cold and withdrawn. I'm the opposite of that. I'm very demonstrative,'' says Roberts, during a phone interview from the ``Everybody Loves Raymond'' set. ``I love to hug and kiss. She comes from a very wealthy, uptight WASP family.

``I loved the different levels,'' she says. ``I've never played that kind of an uptight, rich woman.''

``A Time to Remember'' director John Putch was glad he could play a part in helping Roberts show her dramatic side.

``It's wonderful to be the conduit for her to show her wares,'' he says. ``People are not used to seeing her in this type of role. People see you in one thing and think that's it.

``You can't be shortsighted when you're thinking of talent,'' Putch says. ``You have to look at their body of work. You can't just look at what's on Monday nights.''

Speaking of body, Roberts says Maggie's posture also challenged her.

``One of the hardest things for me was to keep my back straight, to sit up. I'm a slumper,'' she says with a chuckle.

But Roberts doesn't slouch in portraying Maggie's vulnerabilities.

``I played it without looking for sympathy or sentimentality. That's hard for actors to do,'' she notes.

Putch agreed with Roberts' approach.

``We both wanted that,'' he says. ``When you do a drama on television, everything is pointed up and exaggerated to a degree for whatever reason. Because of that, you want to play against it and pull back. It's so obvious what's coming across.

``It's (still) very dramatic and full of all those moments you're expecting. But it's not too heavy-handed.''

The telefilm's ending doesn't land like a ton of bricks either. Since the story only covers a few days, Maggie hasn't progressed to Alzheimer's final, heart-rending stages by its conclusion.

This ending almost represents the calm before the storm.

``I liked the script because it dealt with this stage of Alzheimer's, not the hospital stage or the medical stage,'' Putch says. ``It's the beginning (stage), and that was interesting to me. It was different from your normal disease-of-the-week movie. It became a mother-daughter story with the Alzheimer's attached.

``This horrible (disease) has finally made them talk to each other,'' he says. ``You leave them hopefully (having) patched up some long-standing (issues) that they've been going through as a family. Now they're left with a dark road ahead of them, but at least they're talking.''

Emmy wins and audience laughter aside, Roberts doesn't want viewers to forget certain things from ``A Time to Remember.''

``I love some of the lessons about how simple it is to communicate and about how foolishly we spend so much of our time with petty grievances and old resentment and old anger and old envy,'' she says. ``Nonsense. We fill our bodies up with poison like that. It's simple (to discard) if you communicate and stop being judgmental.''

A TIME TO REMEMBER

What: Doris Roberts stars as Maggie Calhoun, who's coping with the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Where: Hallmark Channel.

When: 8 tonight.

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Photo:

Doris Roberts flexes her dramatic chops in ``A Time to Remember,'' on the Hallmark Channel.