Xyriel kept things on even keel in turgid teleplay

MANABAT. Made her scenes believable and empathetic

Some TV drumbeaters spiritedly claim that “The Legal Wife” is the new teleserye to beat, what with its story of primal suffering and revenge, its all-star cast, scintillating production values, spicy and quotable dialogue, and insightful revelations about marital rights and wanton wrongs, queridas’ wiles and wounded wives’ sinister smiles, etc.—!

—Not to forget the philandering Phils who make their lives so melodramatically complicated, because they can’t seem to keep their pants from falling, and their libidos from rising!

To find out if all or any of those perfervid claims are to be believed, we caught the first telecast of “The Legal Wife” last Jan. 27. Since the teleserye predictably chose to take the long, slow “backstory” approach to its storytelling, we had to initially make-do with scenes depicting the title character—in her childhood!

Local drama series take this frustratingly meandering approach, because they want to build up the roots of the conflicts that will cause misery and violence to the principal characters in adulthood.

For instance, when the child protagonist’s mother was viciously victimized beyond human endurance, the little girl vowed to avenge her poor mother’s tribulations.

All those primal expressions of anger and hatred would have been much too much of an initial melodramatic overload—were it not for the brilliant idea to cast Xyriel Manabat as the younger version of title player Angel Locsin’s character.

We kept watching because, pretty much all by her lonesone, Xyriel was able to make her scenes in the turgid teleplay believable and empathetic.

Even as some of the adult actors around her acted up a “Yolanda”-sized melodramatic superstorm, the instinctively judicious young actress kept things on even keel, so that all that self-conscious emotionalizing and caterwauling wouldn’t distract viewers from the thematic reasons why the series’ story was being told in the first place!