This award-winning six-part historical epic was one of the first examples of the miniseries format and one of the highest-rated television programs in broadcasting history. Based on the best-selling novel by author Alex Haley, Roots chronicles the progress of Haley's own family across many generations, from the kidnapping of an African warrior by ...
Directors David Greene and John-Michael Tebelak collaborate with composer Stephen Schwartz to bring his wildly successful Broadway musical, Godspell, to the big screen. Told almost entirely in song, Godspell presents the gospel of St. Matthew updated to New York City of the late '60s/early '70s, featuring Jesus Christ as a wandering minstrel ...
Richard Chamberlain stars in this lavishly appointed adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas adventure story. When Count Edmond Dantes (Richard Chamberlain) is stripped of his wealth and sent to prison for crimes he did not commit, he swears to get revenge against those who wronged him. With the help of Abbe (Trevor Howard), a fellow prisoner, ...
World War III is an ambitious if unnecessarily protracted speculative TV movie. Set in a "future December," the film prophesies an American grain embargo levied on Russia. US President Rock Hudson is entreated by the Soviet higher-ups to drop the ban; meanwhile, a group of renegade Russian military officers begin sending expeditionary forces into ...
The Emmy-winning TV movie Friendly Fire was adapted by Fay Kanin from the fact-based book by C.D.B. Bryan. Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty play Peg and Gene Mullen, the parents of a young soldier who is killed in Vietnam. Dissatisfied with the "official" version of their son's death, Peg and Gene conduct a soul-wrenching investigation of their own. ...
Someone in the upper echelons of network television must have been enamored of or obsessed with French playwright Robert Thomas' Trap for a Lonely Man, since the property was adapted to television no fewer than three times. The 1986 version, Vanishing Act, stars Mike Farrell as a honeymooning husband. When his new bride turns up missing, Farrell ...
More ambitious and expensive than ABC's first "novel for television" miniseries QB VII, the eight-episode, 12-hour Rich Man, Poor Man was the one that truly put the genre on the map, its phenomenal success in the ratings making possible the even more spectacular Roots. Adapted from the mammoth novel by Irwin Shaw, the miniseries covers the years ...
A priest has been murdered in the neighborhood of Inspector Paul Fein's youth, and it's up to the seasoned cop to crack the case in director David Greene's entry into the tense Family of Cops series. It's not going to be easy going back to the streets of his childhood, but despite the demons that linger in the shadows of every corner, this is one ...
Richard Levinson and William Link serve up another Thinking Man's murder mystery with the made-for-television Rehearsal for Murder. Playwright Robert Preston is on the verge of marrying glamorous film star Lynn Redgrave. But a scant few hours after her Broadway debut, Redgrave is found dead, an apparent suicide. Convinced that Redgrave was ...
Jan-Michael Vincent stars as Kyle Richardson, who works at a dead-end job in a Texas chain-link fence factory. In the tradition of such earlier films as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Richardson enjoys himself only on weekends when he whoops it up with his buddies at the local saloon. His carousing exacts a toll on his relationship with Jodie ...
Convicted murderer Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald had hoped that, by telling his side of the story to investigative journalist Joe McGinniss, the authorities would be persuaded of MacDonald's innocence. Instead, McGinniss ended up unswerving in his belief of MacDonald's guilt, and the result was the devastating best-seller Fatal Vision. In this two-part TV ...
Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link give crime-solving a rest in their script for the made-for-TV sci-fier Prototype. Christopher Plummer plays a curmudgeonly but basically kindly Nobel Prize-winning scientist, who builds an equally kindly (but much handsomer) humanoid named Michael (David Morse). The government-subsidized Plummer ...
In this drama, a teenaged girl and her boyfriend fight back after they are accused of murdering the girl's overbearing, but socially prominent mother. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The sad end of one of the great real-life love stories of the 20th century is recounted in this made-for-TV drama. When Prince Charles (Christopher Bowen) wed Lady Diana Spencer (Julie Cox), their romance was seen by many as the stuff of fairy tales. However, as time wore on, the prince and his princess began to drift apart, and Diana found a ...
The Guardian is set in an upper-class New York apartment building, recently plagued by a series of break-ins and murders. The tenants eagerly enlist the services of former military officer John Mack (Louis Gossett Jr.) as the building's head of security. Slowly but surely, the tenants give up their freedom of movement to Mack, who runs the place ...
Whoever hit upon the idea that What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? would make a good TV movie remake forgot one essential fact. The original 1962 Baby Jane was at best a ludicrous melodrama, which only reached the level of art thanks to the bravura performances of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. This time around, real-life sisters Vanessa and Lynn ...
Another semi-successful attempt to adapt the works of American fantasist H.P. Lovecraft to the screen, this is loosely based on the short story The Shuttered Room (also an alternate release title for the film), a story which is purported to be more the work of "posthumous collaborator" August Derleth. The story involves a couple's return to the ...
Mark Harmon plays an itinerant Depression-era carpenter in the made-for-TV After the Promise. When his wife dies, Harmon is declared an unsuitable parent purely on the basis of his financial situation, and his four children are made wards of the Court. Fighting against the seemingly invulnerable legal system of the era, Harmon struggles to regain ...
This was the "unofficial" Liberace biopic, as opposed to the error-ridden "official" Liberace (telecast one week earlier in October of 1988). The star of Liberace: Behind the Music is Broadway actor Victor Garber, who later scored a personal triumph as the devilish Mr. Applegate in the revival of Damn Yankees. Behind the Music is an unauthorized ...
When the nuclear submarine he captains is rammed by a freighter while surfacing in Atlantic waters just off the coast of Rhode Island, Navy Captain Paul Blanchard (Charlton Heston) is able to radio for help. However, his sub's condition calls for urgent attention. Downed in extremely deep water near an even deeper ocean trench, the sub is perched ...
Richard A. Levinson and William Link took the "fantasy murder" concept popularized in the classic Preston Sturges film Unfaithfully Yours (1948) one fatal step further in Guilty Conscience. Criminal attorney Arthur Jamison (Anthony Hopkins) wants to divorce his wife Louise (Blythe Danner) but will have to clean out all his assets to meet her ...
In this family drama, adoptive parents engage in a legal battle with the biological mother of their child. The mother had been a teenager when she gave up her baby. Now she wants her back. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The first appearance of Bette Davis in a made-for-television film has an evil mastermind (Davis) plotting against a CIA agent (Robert Wagner) for control of a deadly submarine. Aired in 1971, Madame Sin was the most expensive TV movie of the time. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
Parents worry about their daughter when she freaks out on drugs and is hospitalized. Arthur (Eli Wallach) and Gerri (Julie Harris) face the reality when Maxie (Deborah Winters) must remain at the facility or return home. Della (Rue McClanahan) is Arthur's straight shooting secretary and mistress who offers an objective opinion of the situation. Dr ...
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