Ellen Gray: ABC profiles famed 'Potter' author

J.K. ROWLING: A YEAR IN THE LIFE. 8 tonight, Channel 6.

WE MAY BE up to our Muggle ears in "Harry Potter" tie-ins, but ABC News has one tonight that fans of the boy wizard may find irresistible: an hour with the woman who gave him life.

Though ABC's Elizabeth Vargas voices the narration, "J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life" is largely a British import, a 2007 documentary by filmmaker/novelist James Runcie, who spent time with the writer over the course of the year leading up to the publication of her series' final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."

To say that Runcie was given unusual access to a process that usually takes place well out of the public eye is to put it mildly. He's there as Rowling completes a 17-year process and types the final words of "Deathly Hallows."

Or so, at least, he seems to be.

I'm a documentary purist, yet part of me hopes that this one bit might have been at least partly staged, writing not being a process that usually benefits from having a camera trained on it.

Not that Rowling - known in her off-the-page life as Joanne - doesn't sound like a writer.

"It might be rubbish," she says when Runcie congratulates her.

And already she's steeling herself for criticism.

"For some people to love it, others must loathe it. That's just in the nature of the plot," she says. "There's so much expectation from the hard-core fans that I'm not sure I could ever match up to it."

Runcie's no Ted Koppel - the film begins and ends with his administering a version of the Proust questionnaire to Rowling, whose idea of perfect happiness turns out to be "happy family."

And he may stretch the boundaries of even pop psychology at times in trying to link the circumstances of Rowling's early life to Harry's.

Because while there may have been a cupboard under the stairs of the house in Bristol where she spent her early childhood, it's not as if she were required to sleep there.

Still, Rowling, who's been generous with her time with her young fans and more sparing with reporters, comes across as an intriguing figure, if only because, after many trials of her own, she seems like Harry, to be finally happy.

Remarried and the mother of three, she's seen enjoying a life without deadlines for the first time in a decade.

Whether she's laughingly recalling horrific childhood haircuts with her sister, Diane, or, much more seriously, describing the depression that followed the breakup of her first marriage, Rowling seems to walk the fine line between aching honesty and Too Much Information like a pro.

Dismissing as "bollocks" reports that she's worth 570 million pounds - about $935 million - she refuses to name a correct figure.

Why not?

"Because I think it's private," she says, forming that last word with a smile of satisfaction.

She's either one of the best-adjusted celebrities on the planet, or she missed her calling as an actress.

Her experience with depression, we're told, inspired the Dementors, the soul-sucking demons who menace Harry, and, naturally, there are film clips to illustrate.

But other than the timing of its U.S. showing, "A Year in the Life" has little to do with the movie franchise: This is a story about an unhappy single mother whose life was changed by a book.

And if that's not a proper bedtime story, I don't know what is. *

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