Harry Potter Comes To KNME - Daniel Radcliffe stars as Rudyard Kipling’s son in a new MASTERPIECE CLASSIC “My Boy Jack”- Sunday 4/20 at 8:00 pm

It’s odd to see Daniel Radcliffe in roles other than Harry Potter. Sure he’s an actor, and it’s expected, but it’s a little like watching your kid brother grow up. Interesting, if vaguely unsettling. (A bit like watching “Equus,” no doubt, for which he received great reviews last year on the London stage.) It’s even odder when the English-born (who knew?) Kim Cattrall, the quintessential sultry New Yorker from “Sex and the City,” plays his brunette Mom, in an understated role clearly showing her range. This is not sexy Samantha, but a mother who lives in fear for her son. And that’s what makes MASTERPIECE so great! One gets to watch good actors, with good material, really doing their thing!

Radcliffe plays John “Jack” Kipling, the only son of Rudyard Kipling (“The Jungle Book”/”Just So Stories”), as a young man obsessed with serving his country and escaping from the shadow of his famous father, in “My Boy Jack.” Underage and hopelessly nearsighted at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Jack desperately wants to join the fight, but Kipling Sr. has to pull strings to get his son into the army. Jack is in a frontline unit, goes missing, and is presumed injured. It is only over the years, through the recollections of shell-shocked survivors, that the story of his fate emerges. David Haig ("Four Weddings and a Funeral"), who plays Kipling also wrote the screenplay. Carey Mulligan (“Bleak House,”“Jane Austen-Northanger Abbey”) plays Jack’s protective older sister, Elsie.

Rudyard Kipling was the most beloved English author of the day. “It is impossible to overemphasize [Kipling’s] status in 1914,” Haig wrote recently. “He was the voice of the empire, he had the ear of the king and the prime minister, and was as globally popular (and, incidentally, as wealthy) as J. K. Rowling is today.”

MASTERPIECE CLASSIC “My Boy Jack” - Sunday 4/20 at 8:00 – 10:00 pm on KNME, Channel 5

Evy Todd, KNME New Media