Long scorned for ripping off headlines or putting women in jeopardy, broadcasting’s TV movies are undergoing a subtle transition this season.
Cable competition and top-flight producers have pushed the networks to try harder. NBC and CBS each cut back on a movie night last fall to improve quality.
“What you see is long form” — movies and mini-series — “going through an identity crisis,” NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield said. “How do we reach and hit the audience with something they can’t get somewhere else?”
NBC, home of such events as “The Odyssey” and “Gulliver’s Travels,” will offer a lavish mini-series on Merlin the Magician in April and a TV movie of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” in May.
ABC, which has focused on male action movies, is making more films with female appeal, ABC Entertainment President Jamie Tarses said. An example is “The Wedding,” an Oprah Winfrey-produced mini-series starring Halle Berry that aired last month.
Fox plans to make more and bigger movies to attract the 18-to-49 demographic. “People are not interested in wasting time. They’re not interested in mediocrity,” said Peter Roth, Fox Entertainment Group president. Among Fox’s titles: an “Exorcist” mini-series for next year.
But this “identity crisis” in TV movies has largely missed CBS. “The CBS movies are not emulating the `ER’ style or Quentin Tarantino,” said Sunta Izzicupo, the network’s vice president of movies made for television. “I want them to have an elegance, a beauty. Our movies are about feeling, emotion. At their core, they have something to say about people.”
Viewers are responding: CBS has 13 of the 15 top-rated movies so far this season. The No. 1 film, CBS’ “What the Deaf Man Heard,” drew 37 million viewers in November.
“We’re in a new golden age,” said Joseph Sargent, director of “Skylark” and “Miss Evers’ Boys.” “Cable forced quality. Thank God for HBO and Showtime. They were doing substantive, wonderful material while the rest of TV stayed caught in the disease of the week. But now the networks are catching up. They’re taking the challenge.”
Well, not always. November featured four substandard mini-series, including NBC’s “House of Frankenstein” and CBS’ “The Third Twin.” NBC still did “The Lake” with Yasmine Bleeth in February. This month, ABC will offer “Blood on Her Hands” with Susan Lucci as “a woman no man can resist.”
But there are many signs of progress that the TV movie has come a long way from late 1992 and early 1993, when the big three networks all did Amy Fisher movies.
ABC has distinctive franchises with movies from Disney (“Cinderella”) and Winfrey, whose “The Wedding” was far superior to the November minis.
CBS has the Hallmark Hall of Fame (“Ellen Foster,” “What the Deaf Man Heard”). In April, the network will offer “The Echo of Thunder,” a Hallmark movie with Judy Davis as an Australian farmer.
In May, CBS will present “Nicholas’ Gift,” the true story of a California couple (Jamie Lee Curtis, Alan Bates) who donated the organs of their 7-year-old son, slain on vacation in Italy.
For NBC, Barbra Streisand is producing “The Long Island Incident,” the true story of U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), whose anti-gun activism began after a gunman killed her husband and wounded her son on a commuter train.
Cable moved NBC to a new strategy, Littlefield said. “It’s the reason we went from two movie nights to one,” he said. “We’ve got to raise the bar and say what’s unique about these stories.”
CBS Television President Les Moonves agreed. “By making fewer, we’ve been able to get the cream of the crop,” he said.”
CBS went through rocky times with its TV movies years ago when it tried to go hipper, said CBS’ Izzicupo. “We weren’t in tune with the audience,” she said. No more. “We have no contempt for our product,” she said. “We love these things. That comes through. We embrace our audience. We want to give them what they like. But we like them too. That’s the trick.”
But CBS follows a different, less lofty strategy on mini-series. ” `Bella Mafia’ was the perfect formula mini-series, which is popular trash casted up,” Moonves said.
“We have Vanessa Redgrave and Nastassja Kinski. It gives the smart people permission to watch trash, which they are dying to do. They’re dying to close the door and say, `I can watch `Bella Mafia’ because Vanessa Redgrave and Nastassja Kinski are in it.’ That’s why it did very well.”
So well that it’s the top-rated mini-series so far this season. “Do Vanessa Redgrave as `Lady Macbeth’ and you’ve got a 3 share,” Moonves added. ” `The Kennedy Center Honors’ did an 11 share. `Bella Mafia’ did a 26 share. What does that say?”
It says, despite some hopeful signs, don’t put too much faith in TV executives.
