OT: linux vs vt100 termcap problems + screen - help!

[Fairlight]

Okay, this is driving me NUTS!  Someone, please, for the love of all that's
good and holy, save my sanity.

I have screen(1) in play.  It's 8-bit clean, and will do UTF-8.

My setup:

PuTTY or Anzio (doesn't matter which) ->
OpenSuSE 11.1 TERM=linux ->
screen ->
ssh->
any system TERM=linux ->
mutt, yast, any ncurses-based program

Okay...On the box to which I ssh from inside screen, if I have TERM=linux,
then colours draw incompletely, and some graphics characters are wrong
(notably the arrows in thread mode in mutt.  The screens draw incompletely.
Notably, what I mean by this is that colour is entirely absent wherever
there's not a character drawn (even a space will force colour painting).

If I change that box to which I ssh to read TERM=vt100, vt220,
vt320...anything in the vtxxx series, I lose colour, but at least the
screen draws solidly in yast, and the arrows are correctly drawn in mutt.

Problem:  I want my termcap to be linux on the target ssh'd box at all
times, so that I can use -one- terminal setting across multiple emulators
and locations.

Please tell me what the key difference between the vtxxx and linux entries
actually is that's causing this bloody nightmare that I've wasted hours on?
The linux entry is -supposed- to be an extended vt220.  It doesn't act like
it.  And it's driving me mad.  I literally am using the same encodings, the
same font...and it's soley the termcap setting that's causing my headaches.

Problem 2:  I also don't want to have to modify the core /etc/termcap file
for the linux entry.  I need a way to set TERM=linux, yet fix the actual
problem that accounts for the difference.  I thought there was a way around
that...memory is hazy, but I think you can shove an entire termcap entry
into $TERMCAP and that does it.  So I could copy the core entry and just
modify what needs changing and stuff it in the environment.  But I need to
know what the critical difference is that's causing these mis-draws.

Retaining colour would be ideal, but if I absolutely have to suffer
monochrome, so be it--grudgingly.

I know we have some termcap gods here...please, save what's left of my
sanity.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.