Word: sagas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years have passed since ABC's landmark telecast of Roots. In TV time, that is nearly a millennium. Back in 1977, the mini-series was a fresh and vital form. The Big Three networks still had a virtual monopoly on the TV audience. And an old-fashioned, multigenerational family saga disguised as a history lesson about slavery could seem like a major contribution to racial understanding...
Roots had melodramatic excesses too, but they were transcended by the sweep and emotional resonance of the family saga. And the TV landscape has changed a lot. While the fictional mini-series seems stuck in a creative dead end, nonfiction is flourishing. From finely crafted American Experience documentaries to the video verite of Cops and 48 Hours, dramatic artistry & seems to reside more in the sensitive shaping of reality than in the sentimental shams of fiction. Witness Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson...
Among the attackers: Paramount TV this month unveiled not only Deep Space Nine but also The Untouchables, a new version of the Prohibition gangster saga. Warner Bros. TV has lined up 142 stations to carry Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, with David Carradine back as a mystic martial artist, and Time Trax, about a 22nd century cop who goes time-traveling in search of criminals who have escaped to the 20th century. They join such other hours as Highlander (the adventures of a centuries-old Scottish "immortal"), Renegade (Lorenzo Lamas as a motorcycle-riding ex-cop) and Street Justice...
...Fisher touches turns to trash. Including this story. Including viewers of the three schlockudramas that NBC, CBS and ABC began filming in late November and, in some Olympic sprint of sleaze, got on the air last week. Americans by the megamillions watched, on one network or another, the saga of teenage Amy (the "Long Island Lolita"), Joey Buttafuoco (her alleged lover) and his wife Mary Jo (whom Amy shot in the head). Now that the TV-movie epidemic is over, everyone has a bad case of remorse. Is there a morning-after pill for pop cultural guilt...
What's going on here? Can this dark, gritty show really be the latest spin- off in the Star Trek saga -- that seemingly never-ending cult series about a Utopian future in which knowledge and technology conquer disease and poverty and all the races and species in the universe coexist in near perfect harmony? Yes, Mr. Spock, this is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a syndicated show premiering the week of Jan. 4. It takes Star Trek, created 27 years ago by visionary producer Gene Roddenberry, further into uncharted territory than ever before, and is the first Trek venture initiated...