‘Fly Away’ Alights on PBS Tonight : Television: The intelligent but low-rated series canceled by NBC begins its non-commercial run with a new two-hour movie, which will be followed with network repeats.

Producers Joshua Brand and John Falsey have settled into a rut since the early 1980s. A wonderful rut.

Their gleaming creations “St. Elsewhere,” “A Year in the Life” and “Northern Exposure” have spoken for themselves. And even this team’s least memorable work, last season’s “Going to Extremes,” glistened at times.

Tonight it’s their other high achiever, “I’ll Fly Away,” that commands our attention, becoming that rare series to resurface on PBS after being vanquished by a commercial network. Another was “The Paper Chase,” a CBS series that made an extended pit stop on PBS before launching new episodes on cable’s Showtime. And earlier, a BBC miniseries, “The Six Wives of Henry the VIII,” had come to “Masterpiece Theatre” following a summer run on CBS.

Although considerably smaller than a masterpiece, “I’ll Fly Away” surely is superior television as well as a genuine small-screen curiosity, a weekly hour of drama that not only rewards you with intelligent storytelling and sensitivity but also allows African-Americans to share the stage equally with Anglos. That’s almost revolutionary, for minorities are nearly nonexistent as major characters in prime-time drama series--with African-Americans featured prominently in only a few of them, for example, even as they laugh it up on one giddy comedy after another.

Giddiness is happily absent from “I’ll Fly Away.” Turning on volatile race relations in small-town Georgia during the early 1960s, it survived for two seasons on NBC, earning a bunch of Emmy nominations but relatively low ratings before being canceled last season. PBS will rerun all 38 episodes, but only after setting the stage with a new, nicely rendered, though flawed, made-for-TV movie written by Brand and Falsey that airs at 8 tonight on KCET Channels 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15 and at 7 on KVCR-TV Channel 24.

Like the series, the movie focuses on two families with strong values--the black Harpers and the white Bedfords--and returns nearly all of the regulars. Regina Taylor is Lilly Harper, the Bedfords’ African-American housekeeper. Bill Cobbs is her father, Lewis, and Rae’Ven Kelly plays her small daughter, Adlaine. On the Bedford side, Sam Waterston is Lilly’s employer and the town’s progressive local prosecutor, Forrest Bedford. Ashlee Levitch portrays his daughter, Francie, and John Aaron Bennett is his younger son, John Morgan. Absent from the movie are Kathryn Harrold, who plays the defense attorney who is Forrest’s romantic interest, and Jeremy London, who plays Forrest’s older son, Nathan. In the movie, Nathan is played by Jeremy’s twin, Jason.

Titled “Then and Now,” tonight’s story begins in the present with Lilly, now a 63-year-old grandmother and author in Atlanta, flipping through an old scrapbook with her grandson, Lewis Jr. (Amir Jamal Williams). His heroes are rappers, hers remain Martin Luther King Jr. and the rest of the old civil rights guard. She gives him a little history/sensitivity lesson, triggering a flashback to three decades earlier when she was a single mother in tiny Bryland, working for the Bedfords and living with her father and Adlaine.

We see that Forrest is as thoughtful and admirable as ever, a beacon of white liberalism in a town where too many rednecks still rule, and Lilly remains quietly rebellious, inwardly seething about the segregation and other inequities that cripple African-Americans.

The story draws from the United States’ violent recent history, recalling the dangerous friction and tragic consequences that too often resulted from the clashing of the New and Old Souths. The catalyst is Elden Simms (Brent Lowe), a cocky African-American youth who has arrived from Detroit to spend the summer in Bryland with his aunt, a friend and neighbor of the Harpers. Almost immediately, his northern “uppityness” explodes in his face, creating an ugly situation that resonates shrilly. In a dovetailing subplot, meanwhile, college freshman Nathan Bedford is shocked to learn that one of his old pals (Peter Simmons) is a sort of junior Klansman.

Just as the earlier episodes of “I’ll Fly Away” were fond of X-raying and probing its characters, so does this one examine the Harpers from different angles. Like the Bedfords, they are products of their geography and generation. Lilly is nothing if not heroic, and Lewis is a grand old patriarch, warmth and wisdom merging with his vitriol. Isolated from whites, this family hardly seems under anyone’s thumb. Yet co-executive producer Ian Sander directs an interesting scene in which, for all their strength and courage, Lilly and her father are initially too terrified to confront white racist evil directly. Instead, eyes lowered, they acquiesce. Like many others in this movie, the scene reeks of honesty.

Unfortunately, some of “Then and Now” also reeks of television--television in a confused age when people seem uncertain about what constitutes too much violence and what constitutes too little. Although emersed in a tense environment whose looming threat for blacks was violent death, “Then and Now” is gratuitously nonviolent. Almost like Forrest and Lilly themselves, it’s too polite, too civil, too clean.

Oh, the lunatic fringe shows up in the form of Nathan’s hateful friend and the grunting good ol’ boys who bundle off a screaming victim. Yet if viewers can handle seeing the body of a U.S. soldier dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, if they can tolerate the Rodney G. King and Reginald Denny videos, they should be up to seeing for themselves what happens to the victim in “Then and Now,” instead of merely being told of it and spared the sight. It should make us cringe. Without seeing the extent of the savagery, it’s impossible to comprehend the extent of old Lewis’ subsequent bravery in opposing it.

Opponents of TV violence may endorse this clean approach; proponents of history may not.