TV REVIEWS : ‘The Birds II’ Is No Hitchcock Classic

“The Birds II: Land’s End” is pretty much for the birds.

It’s a routine reworking rather than a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic “The Birds.” The film is decently, though unexcitingly acted and has good special effects, but it lacks suspense and tension, crucial for a story so well-known to so many viewers in the first place.

Predictably, the new film plays up the ecological implications of the birds’ malevolent behavior.

Brad Johnson and Chelsea Field play a young couple with two small daughters (Stephanie Milford, Megan Gallagher) who have rented for the summer a ramshackle house on an East Coast island. She has put behind her, as much as possible, the loss of her son in a car accident five years earlier, but Johnson remains paralyzed with grief.

The moral of the story, written by Ken & Jim Wheat and Robert Eisele, is that there’s nothing like a massive attack of killer birds to bring a troubled couple back together.

The star of the original “Birds,” Tippi Hedren, looking much as she did three decades ago, plays the proprietor of the local general store.

* “The Birds II: Land’s End” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on Showtime. It will be followed at 10:30 by the original “The Birds,” which in turn will be followed by “Inside the Birds,” a 15-minute documentary about the making of the two movies.