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Ellen Gray: 'Masters' and 'Masterpiece' profile John Lennon

MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY: LENNON NAKED. 9 p.m. Sunday, Channel 12. AMERICAN MASTERS: LENNONYC. 9 p.m. Monday, Channel 12. YES, YOU CAN now download the Beatles on iTunes.

MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY: LENNON NAKED. 9 p.m. Sunday, Channel 12.

AMERICAN MASTERS: LENNONYC. 9 p.m. Monday, Channel 12.

YES, YOU CAN now download the Beatles on iTunes.

Or you can spend a couple of nights with one of them - John Lennon - on PBS.

With the 30th anniversary of Lennon's slaying only weeks away, both Sunday's "Masterpiece Contemporary" and Monday's "American Masters" look at the complicated life of the man who walked away from the Beatles, found a measure of peace in America and met his death here at the hands of a deranged fan.

One's a drama, the other a documentary, but they dovetail nicely, "Masterpiece's" "Lennon Naked," which stars Christopher Eccleston ("Doctor Who") as Lennon, focusing on the years from 1967 to 1971, when the ex-Beatle and Yoko Ono left for New York, while "Masters'" "LennoNYC" handles the final decade of his life, all of which took place in the U.S.

Neither film suggests where Lennon may have stood on the British TV staple "Doctor Who," but fans of the revived version that appears on BBC America may note that "Masterpiece Contemporary" host David Tennant followed Eccleston in the role of the Doctor, and that Naoko Mori, who plays Yoko Ono, was a regular on the "Who" spin-off "Torchwood."

Eccleston disappears so completely into Lennon that it's possible to forget that he's really too old to be playing him at any point in the film, though the added years add a grimness at times to an already grim story.

There's a chronological backbone to "Lennon Naked" - and, yes, there's a point when he and Yoko take it all off, even if you won't see much - but the heart of the story involves John and his father, a fractured relationship that's meant to explain Lennon's early exit from the daily life of his own son Julian.

I'm no psychologist, but it's all a bit neat for my taste, and though Christopher Fairbank does his best with Freddie Lennon, "Lennon Naked" does far less to humanize the artist than the documentary treatment of "American Masters."

Thanks to outtakes from recording sessions and stuff that apparently was recorded at home, it's almost at times as if we're eavesdropping, not just on the day-to-day life of an often buoyant Lennon, rock star and househusband, but on the creative process.

Even Ono, who met with TV critics this summer to discuss the project, said she was surprised by what "American Masters" had on them both.

"They got so many that I didn't even know," said Lennon's widow, now a chic 77. "I said, 'You mean they were filming us when we were doing that?' . . . Their research even went into things that I didn't know, I mean, the films that I didn't know that existed. And so it's very, very interesting, even for me."

It's interesting, and poignant, too, to watch the pair strolling through Central Park, while we hear Lennon's voice, talking about just what it was he so loved about New York City.

"I'm just known enough to keep my ego floating, but unknown enough to get around, which is nice," he's heard saying as he and Ono stop so he can sign an autograph.

Let other stars flee to London to maintain their privacy: Lennon, we're told, found a freedom in New York that he couldn't in his native Britain.

"We really felt we were in a safe place," Ono says of New York. "We were New Yorkers, in our heads."

"This is something that John would have approved and John would have wanted the world to see because it's . . . the part of his life that he really loved, because it's New York; but also, they're things that people didn't know," she told reporters.

"There's some part of it that's kind of painful for me, and it might be painful for John too," she said, in what might be an allusion to the film's lengthy focus on the couple's separation, a period Lennon spent mostly in Los Angeles and would later refer to as his "Lost Weekend."

May Pang, his girlfriend at the time, gets her say, as does Ono, whose perspective on the separation, all these years later, is a nuanced one: She didn't enjoy sleeping alone, but thinks it helped her creatively.

Lennon's creative process was a bit bumpier, depending on his influences. If nothing else, "LennoNYC" suggests he worked best when he wasn't under any.

Recalling the return to New York and the recording of "Walls and Bridges," recording engineer Roy Cicala says:

"When we started recording 'Walls and Bridges,' I was straight, John was straight, the musicians were straight, and the quality was better because we were all sober. You gotta focus, and we were all focused." *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.