"Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character," Nov. 5, PBS

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Public television's long-running biography series, "American Masters," has already paid homage to the first great lady of television comedy in its excellent Lucille Ball profile, "Finding Lucy," a few seasons back.

Now, it's the turn of a lady with whom Ball frequently worked and hugely admired. "Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character" airs on PBS stations Monday, Nov. 5, 9-10:30 p.m. EST (check local listings). As actress Jenna Elfman observes appreciatively here, assessing Burnett's appeal, "She never was cynical. The humor was never based in insults, bitterness, cynicism. It was purely based out of humor."

As with the Ball special and most of the "American Masters" series, there's a heavy emphasis on the subject's work. And so it is that there are bountiful, and very funny, clips from Burnett's long-running series (which ended in 1978 after more than 280 episodes), her early work on "The Garry Moore Show," her Broadway musical "Once Upon a Mattress" (which has aired -- with Burnett -- on television) and her more serious dramatic work, such as "Pete 'N Tillie" and "Friendly Fire."

The special -- directed by Kyra Thompson -- is framed by Burnett as she is today doing one of her trademark audience Q-and-A sessions; her responses as trigger-quick as ever.

She's had her share of ups and downs in her personal life, including alcoholic parents, necessitating her being raised by her loving grandmother; caring for her kid sister; divorces from her brief early marriage to Don Saroyan and later from her producer-husband Joe Hamilton; and her daughter Carrie Hamilton's struggle with addiction and later premature death from lung cancer, the last just as mother and daughter were preparing a play for Broadway about Carol's early years, "Hollywood Arms."

Some of the scars of her unhappy childhood worked their way into the bittersweet sketches on her show about a bickering Southern family, which struck chords with many viewers. Director Peter Bogdanovich observes, "Carol has an enormous vulnerability, and we sense it, we know it; she's been wounded by life."

Burnett speaks of those travails throughout the film with the same directness that has always characterized her public persona.

There are interviews with Carol's repertory company of Tim Conway, Lyle Waggoner, Harvey Korman and Vicki Lawrence, as well as colleagues like Betty White, Florence Henderson, Phyllis Diller, Tracey Ullman, Garry Shandling and Julie Andrews. The memorable teaming of Burnett and Andrews at Carnegie Hall in 1962 is recalled in a few priceless black-and-white clips.

Her writers -- like Gail Parent and Ken & Mitzi Welch, who wrote much of her early material -- provide interesting insight into the lady's comic style, her insistence that there be no temper tantrums on the set, and her skittishness about singing "as herself" when not in character.

As writer Kenny Solms aptly summarizes, "She gave of herself to the public by showing the funny parts in all of us. Carol is the Everyman. So we could always root for Carol Burnett because she was one of us."

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