Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, Lisa will be reviewing The American Short Story, which ran semi-regularly on PBS in 1974 to 1981.  The entire show can be purchased on Prime and found on YouTube and Tubi.

This week, we have an adaptation of a 1963 short story.

Episode #15: The Sky Is Gray

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired in 1980)

This adaptation of an Ernest Gaines short story takes place in Louisiana during the 1940s.  James (James Bond III) is a young black child who lives on a farm.  His father is overseas, serving in the Army during World War II.  His mother (Olivia Cole) is a stern but loving woman who is trying to raise the sensitive James in a world where one often has to depend on their inner strength to survive.  When James comes down with a toothache, he and his mother travel to a nearby town so he can see the dentist.  From having to stand in the back of the bus to listening to a debate between a priest and a militant in the dentist’s office, it’s an eye-opening journey for James.  When the white receptionist at the dentist’s office arbitrarily cancels James’s appointment and tells him and his mother to come back tomorrow, the two of them seek shelter.  James discovers how strong his mother is when they’re harassed by a pimp (Reuben Collins).  He also learns that there is unexpected kindness in the world when a white store owner invites him and his mother inside to give them shelter from the cold and windy day.  During one trip to the dentist, James learns that the world is far more complicated than he originally knew.

This was an okay adaptation of Gaines’s acclaimed short story.  Young James Bond III gave a good performance as James and the episode was full of scenes that visually captured the feel of being an outsider.  That said, as was often the case with this series, the adaptation was so straight-forward that it didn’t really capture the nuance of Gaines’s writing.  In the short story, Gaines put the reader right into James’s head.  The adaptation doesn’t really do that.  A heavy-handed musical score doesn’t help matters but, with all that in mind, this was still an effective coming-of-age tale.