TV REVIEW : Exceptional Cast Helps ‘Notes’ Hit Home

An exceptional cast brings depth to “Notes for My Daughter,” today’s “ABC Afterschool Special,” a genuinely moving drama about how a mother’s breast cancer affects her family, particularly her 13-year-old daughter.

Mom, Brenda (Kate Burton), and daughter, Dany (Grace Johnston), are especially close, sharing comfortable confidences and a talent for the violin. But when Brenda learns she has breast cancer, and then struggles to accept her mastectomy and chemotherapy, she creates an emotional divide by trying to hide her pain and anger.

Knowing something is being hidden from her, Dany is afraid and confused, and her sense of isolation is heightened when she sees her father (Michael Countryman) and grandmother (Elizabeth Franz) dealing with their anxieties.

Eventually, Brenda understands how much her well-intended cover-up is hurting her daughter and tells her the truth, strengthening the bond between them, particularly as she shifts her focus from the prospect of dying to a renewed interest in life, even though her chances for recovery are left uncertain.

Aside from the fine cast--the adults are accomplished stage veterans--the most unusual element in this short drama, written by Marilyn Webber and directed by Gordon Edelstein, is that the adult characters are more than cardboard cutouts.

Instead of existing only to advance a youth-focused plot for a target teen-age audience, Brenda and her husband and mother earn empathy with experiences that are as meaningful and understandable as Dany’s pain.

* “Notes for My Daughter” airs at 3 p.m. today on ABC (Channels 7, 3 and 42). Another teen-oriented drama about the same subject, “Between Mother and Daughter,” will air at 3 p.m. Tuesday on the “CBS Schoolbreak Special.”