For the past two months, U.S. televiewers have been getting a drama diet with a loftier intellectual content than that of Broadway. The high-vitamin source is Masterpiece Playhouse (Sun. 9 p.m., NBC-TV), which began its experimental run with Ibsen's suicidal Hedda Gabler and ends it this month with Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. This week, for its sixth performance, Masterpiece staged a fast-paced, absorbing performance of Shakespeare's Othello.
Under the searching eye of the television camera, and compressed into an hour's playing time, the TV Othello became a taut, single-minded study of the crack-up of the tormented Moor (played by Britain's Torin Thatcher) under...
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