Sybil asks us immediately to accept shattered crystal and Russian matryoshka dolls as twin images of a fine mind broken into jagged fragments and secret selves nesting inside one another. Sybil (Tammy Blanchard), in order to survive her punishing, demented mother (JoBeth Williams), has fractured herself into more than a dozen alternative personalities, defensive strategies, and attack modes, and has lost control. Dr. Wilbur (Jessica Lange) is the psychiatrist who regresses with her past “dissociative identity disorder” back to the original wound. We are justifiably more suspicious now of “recovered memory” than we were in 1976, when Sally Field starred as Sybil and Joanne Woodward as her shrink in the original Emmy-winning TV movie. Blanchard and Lange have a more problematic aura, while acting up an equally impressive storm.

CBS
Saturday, June 7, 8 p.m.

Related:

• Archive: “Television”
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