made-for-tv

If you get Showtime, just consider September’s subscription fee a donation to the Bush 2004 election campaign.

Even vocal critics of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani concede that on that terrible September morning two years ago, he was every bit the leader the city needed: a calming voice of reason and later, during the few remaining months of his term, the mourner-in-chief. But it’s too soon to have any real … more…

It’s fine and warm and satisfying and, yes, inspiring, but this second adaptation of the novel by William H. Armstrong mostly just inspires us to ask, simply, Why? The 1972 original was nominated for multiple Oscars and continues to bewitch viewers today, so why remake it? Kids will enjoy the tale of the coonhound named … more…

If you’re not already miserably depressed at the state of the world and how awful people can be and the terrible crimes that get perpetrated under a cloak of religion or ideology or politics, or if you just don’t think that pretending stuff like this doesn’t happen helps one bit, then tune into Showtime this month for *Soldier’s Girl* and *Jasper, Texas,* which amply demonstrate the cable network’s commitment to excellence in its original programming.

Sci Fi Channel remade David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune as something less bizarre and baroque but something more comprehensible, and now the network returns with a sequel, based on the second and third books in Frank Herbert’s beloved series of novels. Paul Atreides (Alec Newman) of House Atreides, previously revealed as the prophesied savior Muad’dib, … more…

The cannons don’t thunder. The nagging feeling that life today is not as exciting as it once might have been has got to be part of why A&E’s Hornblower series has been so much fun. ‘When we put on this uniform, Mr. Hornblower,’ Horatio’s Capt. Pellew tells the young man, ‘we entered into a life of adventure and adversity.’ Our Hero is terribly upset and looking for reassurance that he’s chosen the right path for himself when Pellew offers this nugget, and though it seems to soothe Horatio only a little, I gotta say, adventure and adversity sounds like fun to me.

But guess what? Horatio Hornblower is a fictional character. And Ioan Gruffudd is an actor. On television. He lives and works thousands of miles away from you. You are not ever going to meet him. He is not going to leave his wife or his girlfriend or his boyfriend or his dog to turn up on your doorstep. He is not going to read your panting posting with a gasp and say to himself, ‘Where has this woman been all my life?’ It ain’t gonna happen.

Gene Roddenberry is said to have based much of Capt. James T. Kirk on C.S. Forester’s Napoleonic War hero Horatio Hornblower. I can’t say that I see much of Kirk in the young Hornblower A&E’s four-part movie series is showing us. In fact, The Fire Ship, the second in the series, has him behaving a decidedly un-Kirk-like manner.