SORDID AFFAIR: Bill Pullman and Mariana Klaveno star in “Innocent.” (James Dittiger)
BACK WHEN: “Brian’s Song” was a movie of the week in the ’70s. (
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As networks continue to lose viewers with their lame attempts at creating edgy shows to compete with cable, cable has gone back and created the kind of sure-fire hit that the networks gave up because they weren’t edgy enough in the first place.
I’m talking about the movie of the week, a formula that created ratings bonanzas, often from hit books.
Who can ever forget (if you were born, that is) “Brian’s Song,” “An Early Frost,” Sybil,” “Death of a Salesman” or “Bill”?
Some of the best TV movies managed to pull 54 shares. That means 54 percent of everyone watching TV was watching their movie that night.
You’d think network execs would kill for those numbers but noooo.
They felt they couldn’t compete with cable nets like HBO showing full-frontal naked ladies.
For the most part, the whole TV-movie format — and the sizzle — was abandoned to “women’s” networks like Hallmark and Lifetime.
Tonight, TNT makes everything that’s old new again by reviving the movie of the week — or, in this case, the two movies of the week, with “TNT Mystery Movie Night,” featuring original movies made from the novels of some of America’s greatest mystery writers.
Such as? Such as tonight’s premiere of “Scott Turow’s
Innocent” and tomorrow’s premiere of Sandra Brown’s “Ricochet.”
In the next few weeks, they’re presenting Lisa Gardner’s “Hide,” Richard North’s “Silent Witness,” April Smith’s “Good Morning, Killer” and, in time for Christmas,“Deck the Halls,” by Mary & Carol Higgins Clark.
And the slate of original TV movies couldn’t be a better gift for those of us who loved those TV movies back when and hated to see them replaced with reality TV nonsense.
Tonight’s first original movie, “Innocent,” is the 20-years-later sequel to Turow’s runaway bestseller, “Presumed Innocent.” The first became a feature starring Harrison Ford as prosecuting attorney Rusty Sabich, who was accused of murdering his mistress.
Rusty (Bill Pullman) is now a not-yet-crusty 60-year-old appellate court judge, whose crazy wife (Marcia Gay Harden) ends up dead of “natural causes.” This is well before a woman her age even develops natural causes extreme enough to kill her off.
Oh, damn Rusty — not again! Yes, again.
And worse, Rusty doesn’t report her death for 24 long hours.
See, Rusty, had been having an affair with his gorgeous law clerk (Mariana Klaveno) and doesn’t want his son (Callard Harris), who has just finished law school himself, to ever know. Rusty just doesn’t realize how much he doesn’t want his son to know about his affair until the second unthinkable thing happens.
Meantime, the district attorney (Richard Schiff) and his top prosecutor (Tahmoh Penikett) aren’t convinced Mrs. Sabitch just up and died — and they’re right.
And TNT is right to bring back the format — well done whodunits.