Tales of Yesteryear: MotW and Miniseries of Yore - General Discussion

[Dr.OO7]

On 8/28/2015 at 8:43 PM, Spartan Girl said:

Does anyone remember a movie of the week about an abused wife that escapes to a shelter with the kids, but the husband tracks them down and shoots her in front of the children while they are having dinner with a friend? I can't remember the title...

When No One Would Listen.

[catlover79]

On 10/2/2018 at 3:10 AM, methodwriter85 said:

Elizabeth Montgomery did a fantastic t.v. movie called Between the Darkness and the Dawn, where she plays a woman who spent 20 years in a coma and has to cope with the loss of her youth, the loss of her high school boyfriend to her sister who wound up marrying her, and a world that has moved on without her.

Yes, the sister was played by Karen Grassle. I remember being so jazzed that Samantha Stephens and Caroline Ingalls were not only in the same MOW, but as sisters who hated each other!! 😂

[funandfitpt]

There's Something About Amelia was one of the first I remember watching and it really affecting me. I loved watching MotW when I was younger.

[cpcathy]

I found it on YouTube a couple of months ago, it's overwrought in places and then there are a few scenes that are really well done.

[Dr.OO7]

I dug up "Fallen Angel" on YouTube the other day. I didn't see it when it first aired (1981) as I was an infant, but I caught a rerun on Channel 11 years later. The guy playing the pedophile is unbelievably creepy. And the worst part is that he not only doesn't think he's doing anything wrong, he genuinely thinks it's RIGHT.

"I'm NOT a molester! Molesters force the kids and hurt them! I LOVE children!"

Edited December 10, 2019 by Camille

[proserpina65]

On ‎09‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 1:47 PM, TVFan17 said:

Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (this one was with Linda Blair, but, truth be told, I loved all of those "Portrait of..." movies, and there were several of them!!)

Dawn, Portrait of a Teenage Runaway - with a very un-Brady-like Eve Plumb.  I still remember this one decades later.

[KnotsLanding]

I watch a lot of soaps so I usually try to watch ones with soap stars I'm familiar with. I'm also noticing Amazon Prime has a lot available for free so I'm adding them to my wishlist to watch!

One that I just saw that I loved was called Always Remember I Love You starring Joan Van Ark and Patty Duke. Joan's character had an adopted teenage son who overheard his parents talking and found out he was not only adopted, but it was an illegal adoption. He ran away to find his parents and Patty Duke who played his real mother, took him in thinking he was a runaway. It was such a sad movie because here you had one mother whose son was kidnapped and she thought he was dead and then Joan's character knew it was an illegal adoption, but not that it was a stolen child. It seemed like her husband had taken care of everything. In the end the boy went back to his adoptive parents and left a note for his birth parents telling them how much he loved them and who he was. It was very well done for a tv film! It's on youtube if anybody wants to watch it.

[Sharpie66]

Does anyone else remember the 1989 British TV movie Precious Bane? It was shown on Masterpiece Theatre here in the US. Clive Owen recently appeared on my tv, and he made me remember the first time I saw him, back in that TV movie 32 years ago. It was also really early in Janet McTeer’s career.

They are both terrific as brother and sister Gideon and Prue Sarn in an England on the cusp of industrialization. He is an ambitious farmer desperate to make as much money as he can, and she is his supportive sister burdened by a cleft lip and occasionally suspected of being a witch whenever something goes wrong in the village.

The other actor who still shows up on other MT shows is John Bowe, who plays the itinerant weaver Kestor Woodseaves who falls in love with Prue. He is super sexy in a very earthy way, and you totally buy their connection. He showed up again a few years later as the first Prime Suspect in the Helen Mirren series.

It used to be on YT but it looks like it was removed. It is definitely worth tracking down!

[Dr.OO7]

Speaking of Masterpiece Theatre, there was a great one 20 years ago called "Reckless", where a surgeon falls in love with the wife of the Chief Of Staff at his hospital and resolves to win her. THIS is the main focus of the story. The fact that she's 10-15 years his senior is irrelevant.

I don't like the presence of the Good Adultery, Bad Adultery trope--her husband's affair is presented as despicable, while hers is the central love story, but other than that, it's very well written and acted.

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by Camille

[Writing Wrongs]

On 9/30/2018 at 2:59 PM, WhitneyWhit said:

Killing Mr. Griffin  Jay Thomas plays a hard ass teacher named Mr. Griffin who is kidnapped by some students (Mario Lopez and Amy Jo Johnson being a couple of them) in an effort to get revenge on him, but the prank goes wrong when Mr Griffin dies of heart failure.

This is very similar to the movie Teaching Mrs Tingle.

[WhitneyWhit]

On 12/21/2019 at 4:33 PM, Writing Wrongs said:

This is very similar to the movie Teaching Mrs Tingle.

It's basically the same movie. Teaching Mrs Tingle was even supposed to be called Killing Mrs Tingle but they changed it due to Columbine.

[Dr.OO7]

Does anyone remember this one?

I don't know why it came into my mind just now.

And this similar one:

Edited August 8, 2022 by Dr.OO7

[Dr.OO7]

Remember this?

Despite its plot being completely different from the Broadway show, it's what started my love of The Phantom Of The Opera 

Edited October 29, 2022 by Dr.OO7

[Badger]

Anybody remember "A War of Children" about the troubles in Northern Ireland? Jenny Agutter is in it.

Also "QBVII" which was a two-part miniseries starring Anthony Hopkins as a Polish doctor living in London who sues a Jewish author for claiming in a novel that he had sterilized hundreds of Jews in a concentration camp.  Ben Gazzara played the author.

 

[merylinkid]

13 hours ago, Badger said:

Anybody remember "A War of Children" about the troubles in Northern Ireland? Jenny Agutter is in it.

Is that the one where they sent a Catholic and a Protestant kid to live with a family in the US for the summer so they could see the other side wasn't evil?    There was a bombing during that time and one kid -- whose dad had been killed by their own side as a "traitor" -- was all "How many did we get?"

[Badger]

7 hours ago, merylinkid said:

Is that the one where they sent a Catholic and a Protestant kid to live with a family in the US for the summer so they could see the other side wasn't evil?    There was a bombing during that time and one kid -- whose dad had been killed by their own side as a "traitor" -- was all "How many did we get?"

I don't remember as it's been some time since I saw it; it is on YouTube though.  I remember it's about 2 families - one Catholic, one Protestant - who are close friends and how they stop being friends because of what is going on.  The son of one family and the daughter of the other family fall in love.  i remember there is a scene where a woman is tarred and feathered for consorting with the enemy.

[merylinkid]

Oh totally different movie.   Now I have to go figure out which one I meant.

[MollyMelrose]

They may have made a movie about this, but it was a real program.  

https://www.irishamerica.com/2015/01/project-children-draws-to-a-close/

http://www.projectchildren.org/history

[Snow Apple]

For some reason, Youtube recommended a movie called Sweet Hostage starring Martin Sheen and Linda Blair. I actually liked it and both of them were at their most beautiful. 

I doubt it would be made today! At least not romanticized like that.

[ctlady]

From 1984 - Why Me? with Glynnis O'Connor.  Based on the true story of Leola Mae Harmon.  it was both heartbreaking and heartwarming

[DoctorAtomic]

Let's bring this back up. I know the topic was mostly the miniseries on the broadcast networks. Back then, Disney had a movie of the week. Escape to Witch mountain creeped me out. 

I'd like to fast forward to the late 90s and early 2000s though. The SciFi channel, when it was actually showing science fiction, had a ton of ambitious miniseries and standalone movies on Saturday nights. They did the first *three* Dune books with James McAvoy. Steven Spielberg produced Taken, about aliens that was on 5 nights for two weeks, like the old miniseries used to be. Something else about a room where a guy had to recover objects and place them in a motel room. Another one was on the original ring cycle that was part of the Lord of Rings source material when the movies were out. 

I mean, they were B/B+, but they were still original and good enough. We used to talk about them over at the old place.  

[MissAlmond]

On 11/8/2022 at 2:53 PM, Badger said:

I don't remember as it's been some time since I saw it; it is on YouTube though.  I remember it's about 2 families - one Catholic, one Protestant - who are close friends and how they stop being friends because of what is going on.  The son of one family and the daughter of the other family fall in love.  i remember there is a scene where a woman is tarred and feathered for consorting with the enemy.

A War of Children.

[mmecorday]

Does anyone remember the 1996 miniseries "Titanic" that starred Catherine Zeta Jones and Peter Gallagher as star-crossed lovers? It was as soapy as it was dopey. 

Peter Gallagher was in one of my favorite TV miniseries of the 80s, "The Murder of Mary Phagan." He played a Jewish man named Leo Frank who was accused of killing a 13-year-old girl who worked at a pencil factory. 

[DoctorAtomic]

A pencil factory? Wow. 

[Lisa418722]

16 hours ago, mmecorday said:

Peter Gallagher was in one of my favorite TV miniseries of the 80s, "The Murder of Mary Phagan." He played a Jewish man named Leo Frank who was accused of killing a 13-year-old girl who worked at a pencil factory. 

I moved to the Atlanta area in the early 2000s and one day I was driving around and saw a plaque that mentioned Leo Frank's lynching.