Iconoclasts: Ruby Dee & Alicia Keys
Thursday night at 10, Sundance

Watching Ruby Dee meet Alicia Keys is like watching a torch of elegance pass from one artistic generation to another.

It feels warm, genuine and uplifting. It is precisely the kind of television that critics of the medium think networks should be producing more often.

So the question, as always, is whether people will watch it - how many viewers will want to spend an hour watching two women talking about the meaning of art or the commonality between acting and singing as means of human expression. Whether they want to watch two women doing a call-and-response reading of a poem.

Given that this program is on the relatively low-profile Sundance Channel, the ratings won’t really provide much of an answer. Or, more to the point, we already have the answer: It’s channels like Sundance that do these shows, not the major networks.

If you ever need to defend a universe with hundreds of cable channels, this is why: to arrange and preserve a conversation between Alicia Keys and Ruby Dee.

The only real frustration in the production is that the conversation itself is a modest part of this hour. For much of the show, Dee and Keys speak separately, about their art, their lives and about their admiration for each other.

That’s fine. It’s particularly fine when Dee reflects on her career and life with her late husband, Ossie Davis. Using old still photographs, these segments feel like leafing through a scrapbook with a narrator. Dee remains passionate and insightful about the path they walked, which was not always easy.

Keys, being almost 60 years younger, has less personal history, but she addresses things that matter, like the importance of focus and pursuing a dream.

Dee chimes in on that part of the conversation, the same way Keys makes some observations about Dee’s career.

Interestingly, a few points that would seem to suggest common ground don’t go too far. They discover they grew up only a block apart in Harlem, for instance, so their remembrances might give the viewer an interesting picture of how everyday life changed between the ’30s and the ’90s.

Instead, they steer the conversation more toward their art, the value of art and what it means in human life.

It’s a program for which you probably need to be in a relaxed, reflective mood. It doesn’t pack the punch of, say, “CSI,” but it should have a long and valuable shelf life.