TV Reviews : Katey Sagal Turns Dramatic in ‘Innocent’

Katey Sagal, in a radical departure from “Married . . . With Children,” makes her TV movie debut tonight playing the distraught mother of a daughter accused of murder in NBC’s “She Says She’s Innocent” (9 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39).

Sagal, her assertive features softened by waves of tumbling auburn hair, is uncharacteristically constrained for much of the movie by a role that’s deceptively difficult because it demands more reaction than action as she listens to the pleas of innocence from her dissembling 16-year-old daughter (Charlotte Ross).

Here Sagal’s TV family really is dysfunctional. Her house is beautiful but she is pregnant, estranged from her husband (Alan Rachins) and fiercely loyal to a daughter up to her teeth in suspicion over the brutal killing of a schoolmate.

For the most part, Sagal and Ross shortchange their performances with expressions that are more studied than animated, and director Charles Correll brings more caution than juice to Kathleen Rowell’s script. Except for some intermittent flash points, the production only works up emotional fireworks at the obligatory dramatic payoff.