Word: shows
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Charles Colson, John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, Bud Krogh) get such short shrift that it is often hard to tell them apart; they are interchangeable ciphers in a series of look-alike scenes. Pat Nixon (Cathleen Cordell) is a walk-on role, and Martha Mitchell is not even mentioned. The show has a surprisingly in consistent attitude toward the casting of famous faces. Ehrlichman (Graham Jarvis) and John Mitchell (John Randolph) vaguely resemble their real-life counter parts, but many of their White House cronies do not. This indecision extends right up to the stars: Russell has been extensively refurbished...
...docu-drama adapted from John Dean's memoir (among other sources), Blind Ambition recites enough facts to satisfy the most literal and obsessive Watergate buff. Yet scrupulous accuracy does not necessarily make for good drama or even good history. For all its intricate detail, CBS'S show is a less incisive account of the Nixon scandals than its pulpy predecessor. ABC took the audience into the heart of the forest of Watergate; CBS shows us only a numbing succession of trees...
Blind Ambition has good intentions; this mini-series is even more ambitious than its protagonist. By tracing the career of White House Counsel Dean (Martin Sheen), the show can touch on virtually every Watergate headline: the Huston plan, the Saturday Night Massacre, the plumbers' dirty tricks, the Nixon pardon. Unfortunately, Writer Stanley R. Greenberg (Pueblo) retells the story without regard for the niceties of strong character development or well-paced storytelling. In the entire series his only theatrical flourish is the use of a flashback format in the first half. Besides being a TV cliché (especially in nonfiction...
Blind Ambition's difficulties do not end there: the show's focus is wrong. Whatever one thinks of John and Mo Dean, it would be hard to argue that they are dynamic personalities. Not even a fine actor like Sheen can make the unflappable hero seem fascinating, especially for eight hours...
...drifted from state to state and job to job. Her father sang a lot, wrote his daughter a little tune called The Moon Is Made of Gold ("So don't feel bad because the sun went down/ The moon is made of gold"), which she includes in her show. Kicked out of high school in Olympia, Wash., Rickie Lee started drifting and bumming, drinking heavily, getting a firsthand taste of the lowlife. "I've been as far down as I can go and I made it out," she reflects. "So there's nothing to be afraid...