Conjuring Up Catfish Row

TITLE: PORGY AND BESS

TIME: OCT. 6, 8 P.M. PBS, ON MOST STATIONS

THE BOTTOM LINE: Trevor Nunn's staging dominates a stirring production of the Gershwin classic.

Once again, U.S. audiences have the British to thank for doing overdue justice to an icon of American popular culture. This first-ever TV version of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess comes not from an American network but from the BBC. The director is a seasoned hand at such transatlantic transactions: Trevor Nunn, former head of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the man who brought Cats and Les Miserables to Broadway.

In putting an opera on...

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