TV REVIEW : ‘Postcards’ From ‘Alive From Off Center’ on PBS

The PBS summer series “Alive From Off Center” kicks off its sixth season tonight with a wryly wicked video sonnet about fickle love called “Postcards” (11 p.m., Channel 28).

A man and a woman, who seem achingly in love, discover that absence, in their case, breeds doubt and anxiety. What lights up this ever-so-mortal tale of doomed romance is the droll and deliciously ironic technique employed by director/writer Mark Rappaport.

The disintegration of the love affair is largely heard in voice-over through the banalities the lovers exchange on the back of a steady stream of postcards. The guy, a traveling salesman, is pining away on the road, sending back a postcard collection of all-night diners and motels, while the woman pines at home. At first, “miss you” is genuine. Then the cheating begins: “Wish you were here” becomes a lie.

What turns this mundane plot into satire are the dry tone and the clever graphics, which enjoy a kind of Ernie Kovacs’ looniness. The style comically informs the brittle subject matter.

By juxtaposing the lovers and their tongue-tied words against an enlarged backdrop of kitschy, colorful postcards, the pictures and their fanciful vistas become amusing, biting commentaries. The couple is played perfectly straight-faced, with a nice nervous pitch, by Ron Vawter and Dorothy Cantwell.

“Postcards,” a video reflection of romance as imagery and sound bites, is the satiric underside of the popular, two-character stage play “Love Letters” (currently at the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills). The 30-minute film also won Best Narrative Short at this year’s recent USA Film Festival in Dallas.