Variety was the spice of her life

There is value in being old enough to remember watching "The Carol Burnett Show" in real time. It was the best of that now-extinct species, the variety show, and in memory serves as something of a Camelot. Yes, there was a time when comedy was smart yet innocent, when satire did not have to be smug, when TV actors could sing and dance and execute a perfectly timed pratfall.

Burnett, bless her soul, is a comic genius and highly accomplished actress who would not be able to find a job today. In our Hollywood, physical comedy is left to the boys and life is difficult for women who don't fit an increasingly narrow beauty ideal -- the current "ugly-duckling" standard is someone as pretty as Tina Fey.

But watching her during the show's run (1967 to 1978), nothing like that clouded the air. Burnett wasn't political or symbolic. Carol Burnett was Carol Burnett. She tugged on her ear, she did her Tarzan yell and played Eunice, sang duets with Julie Andrews and Eydie Gorme; she tried to keep Tim Conway from making Harvey Korman crack up in the middle of a sketch. She was a woman without a past, except showbiz, a performer without context except her own outsized talent. In her own way, Carol Burnett was television itself.

So tonight's "Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character" on PBS' "American Masters" is a double pleasure. The years evaporate as iconic sketches -- the "Gone With the Wind" and "Sunset Boulevard" spoofs, the Mama and Eunice scenes -- are revisited and explained. Current comedic actors, including Jon Cryer and Jenna Elfman, profess their devotion while Burnett and her compatriots -- all the costars, including Lyle Waggoner, are present and accounted for -- talk about the old days. But we also learn the narrative of Burnett, and that's a worthy story whether you remember the show or not.

Her personal story is, not surprisingly, classic Hollywood. The daughter of two alcoholics, Burnett was raised mostly by her grandmother (the signature ear tug was originally her way of saying hi to Nanny). With that broad smile and huge voice, she seemed destined for Broadway, and there she went in hopes of a career on the stage. But Garry Moore found her, put her on his show and, strangely enough, that rubber face and those coltish legs did just fine on the small screen.