Jonathan Storm: Things reality TV can't do

The latest reality show has a script and actors and will probably be scrupulously avoided by all the cool kids who groove to Big Brother and the lie detector on

Moment of Truth

.

But unlike those fake-ality shows,

The Russell Girl

on

The Hallmark Hall of Fame

(CBS3, 9 tonight) illuminates some of life's realities: love, guilt, anguish. Its characters, though fictitious, are not the buffoons of TV reality, but people you have known or wish you did.

Jill Blotevogel, one of the scads of nameless strikers trying to get a little respect and a more reasonable share of the TV billions, made it up. Fine acting, particularly from Amber Tamblyn and Jennifer Ehle, breathes life into it, the same way the sun and soil breathe life into the breathlessly green crops that surround the small town (you were expecting Tokyo from

Hall of Fame

?) where it is set.

That would be Staunton, Ill., just down the road from Honey Bend, "in the middle of nowhere," Blotevogel says in an interview, even if it is less than an hour from St. Louis. She grew up there and wrote

The Russell Girl

eons ago, when she was the same age as its post-college heroine, long before she got involved with

Crossing Jordan

,

The Dead Zone

, and CBS's current

Moonlight

.

Ontario makes a fine stand-in for Illinois, cheaper to shoot in Canada and all that, filtering more money to little Hall of Fame Productions Inc., if not to Blotevogel, though it would take a cold-hearted wrong-head to put the Hallmark studio in the same basket with the Scrooge-Legree crowd at places like NBC-Universal or Disney.

Tamblyn, Emmy-nominated for the dearly missed

Joan of Arcadia

, carries the heavy emotions of the film, with its long silences and constant close-ups, as lightly as cotton candy. As bright and shiny young Sarah Russell living in Chicago, she's diagnosed with leukemia right off the bat and decides to head back to Mom and Dad in Staunton.

But not to tell them about her sickness. "Do you think people get what they deserve in life?" is all she asks, long after we suspect that there is some sad past mystery plaguing her and across-the-street neighbor mom Lorraine Morrissey. Watch double Tony-winner Ehle (Tom Stoppard's

The Real Thing

and

The Coast of Utopia

) get a supporting-actress Emmy nomination for this gripping performance.

Just as Lorraine is as locked up as the barn door after the horse got out, Sarah is determined to shoulder her guilt and her illness all by herself, and a gentle story of forgiveness and humanity slowly moves from dripping sadness into the sunlight.

No kicks here, watching some greedy exhibitionist squirm under the pressure of "Have you ever spied on your coworkers in the bathroom?"

Instead, you get to squirm, and maybe cry a little bit if you're a softy like me, in the face of the kind of reality that only art can reveal.

The Russell Girl

Tonight at 9

on CBS3