TV

The Memory Keeper's Daughter, which premieres tonight on Lifetime, is one of those movies that should be better than it is, the kind of show best watched while doing something else — the ironing, perhaps, or light weight lifting.

The work is adapted from Kim Edwards' tear-jerking best-seller of the same name with a cast that includes the brilliant (Emily Watson), the beautiful (Gretchen Mol) and the ever-dependable (Dermot Mulroney).But it suffers from too much of a muchness — a surfeit of drama that marches dutifully across the screen as if determined to meet an emotional assault deadline rather than actually move the viewer. Yes, tears will be shed, moments of truth and beauty illuminated, but the title notwithstanding, nothing that happens here remains in your memory very long.

From the moment Nora Henry (Mol) goes into labor on a dark and snowy night in 1964, you know things will not go well. The doctor has an accident so Nora's husband, David (Mulroney), also a doctor, must deliver his own child. Or rather children, as the quick birth of a perfect baby boy is followed by the surprising birth of a twin girl, who suffers from Down syndrome.

Having endured the heartache of watching a beloved sister die from a birth defect, David instantly decides to spare his anesthetized wife the grief of loving a child he assumes will not live very long. He hands the baby over to Caroline (Watson), his nurse, and directs her to a local institution.

Out into the snow she goes, but the institution is snake-pit horrible. Spurred by compassion and a secret crush on David, Caroline chooses to take baby Phoebe and raise her on her own. Stopping at a market for milk and diapers, she runs out of gas and, alone in the snow with a newborn, is rescued by a friendly trucker who instantly falls in love with her.

Back in the clinic, David tearfully tells Nora she had twins but the girl died.

All of this and more, including strange black-and-white flashbacks to David's apparent childhood, occur within the first five minutes of the movie. And that should tell you something about its pacing problem.

I understand that the events of the book are crucial and had to be faithfully represented, but it would have been nice if screenwriter John Pielmeier and director Mick Jackson could have figured out a less galloping way to make the film. Galloping so easily tips into melodrama and that is where The Memory Keeper's Daughter spends too much time.

There is so much narrative ground to cover, so many emotional moments to hit, that the performances come off like scenes from an acting class — OK, now it's five years later and you're embarking on an affair; OK, it's 10 years later and you're divorced.

Stripped to their essential ingredients, these lives lack the alchemy to make them believably whole.