Article: Checkers documentary jumps expectations.(Suburban Living)(TV & Radio)

Byline: Ted Cox

Checkers has a reputation as a simple game. Yet, in a new HBO documentary, it opens up into life's profundities and takes a viewer places beyond the expected.

Debuting at 7:45 p.m. today on HBO2, "The Checker King" looks at 81-year-old Harold O'Brien, a widower living in Mason City, Iowa. O'Brien looks about as one would expect a checker player to look, right down to the plaid shirt and suspenders. Yet his story is so common as to be unique - surprising and poignant in its details - and the 40-minute documentary takes pains to tell it with care.

That's in part because it is narrated and directed by O'Brien's nephew, Kevin ...

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