Let’s Talk About TV Mini-Series of the 80s

Liked the RtE series much better than the miniseries.

V was the best.

I loved Return to Eden !!! The whole plotline with the crocodile attack and then being rescued by a benevolent plastic surgeon who reconstructs your face only to move to 'Sydney and become a supermodel !!!! This a a data longe wet dream !!!

Why, yes! As a matter of fact, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Suzanne Somers DID make a miniseries together!

Is the Barbara Hutton mini-series any good?

Celebrity, with Joseph Bottoms playing gay.

I never saw Celebrity but it was a book everyone's mom was reading in the bleachers while I played little league baseball. I was more interested in that damn book!

V was awesome, though I have soft spots for Lonesome Dove and North and South as well.

I loved this trashy things. WHET Joseph and Timothy Bottoms?

V definitely needs a reboot as a limited series on streaming.

Surprisingly, R9, they both have recent acting credits, though they've slowed down a lot. Do we think Joseph might be family? He didn't marry until 40, then divorced after just a few years and never remarried.

Which one of you bitches is my mother?

Scruples.

My all time favourite 1980s mini series is I'll Take Manhattan, about the cut throat world of publishing and adultery starring Julianne Moore, seriously. Julianne plays the most beautiful film star in the world who ends up dating the incredibly hot Timothy Daly who is blind and therefore literally can't see how beautiful Julianne is! There's also a sub plot involving Tim's gay brother who is seduced by a model at the request of his evil uncle Perry King who turns out to be his dad, because he was fucking his brother Barry Bostock's wife Francesca Annis. Also starring Valerie Bertinelli as Maxine "Maxi" Amberville.

The Murder of Mary Phagan miniseries was quite good.

Oh yes and there was Master Of The Game starring Dyan Cannon with some hideous ageing make up who plays a woman who inherited her father's business built on diamonds he stole in South Africa. The father was played by Ian Charleson before he died of AIDS, and Harry Hamlin is also in it as someone with a stutter. And there are two ginger twins, one lovely and sweet and one vain and evil who gets a nasty comeuppance.

The Blue and the Gray.

We loved "Scruples." Such fun.

Dress Gray, teleplay by Gore Vidal, starring peak-hotness Alec Baldwin investigating the murder of a gay cadet at a West Point-like military academy.

There was Sins with classically trained Joan Collins who survives the Holocaust to become a leading light in the world of fashion publishing and get brutalised by a lot of horrible men on the way. There was a dreadful scene where Joan's pregnant mother was repeatedly punched in the stomach by Nazis and they say to her "Your baby is dead but you can still save your own life" or something like that. And then there's the trial of one of the Nazis and Joan's brother Timothy Dalton, also classically trained, takes to the stand and is questioned about the lack of concentration camp tattoo on his arm. He explains that his hands were burned so they tattooed him on his chest, as he dramatically opens his shirt to reveal the tattoo.

Okay, this one just missed it but I loved "The Bastard"! Even the title was shocking for 1979.

Bangkok Hilton was unironically brilliant. Nicole Kidman, Denholm Elliot (before he died of AIDS), Hugo Weaving and Noah Taylor

This thread is bringing back so many wonderful memories!

Pluto TV should have a channel of miniseries of the 1980s!

Mistral's Daughter and The Winds of War come to mind.

I know this is a predictable answer but I still love The Thorn Birds. Sprawling, epic, beautifully filmed and acted, great score by Henry Mancini.

I remember there was a thread or post a few years ago on DL where someone said that Rachel Ward's character must have been crazy picking Richard Chamberlain over Bryan Brown. Brown was so hot in this, I can totally understand why Ward married him.

I *loved* "V" and "V: The Final Battle." My sister and I taped them (on Beta, no less!) and rewatched them dozens of times.

I was 12/13 when they aired, and still have autographed photos of several cast members, which I received after writing and (snail-)mailing them each a fan letter. The nicest response I got was from Blair Tefkin, who played Robin (the one who gave birth to the alien baby). She actually wrote me a short letter in reply along with her photo because I'd asked if she'd also appeared in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." (She had.)

Jesus of Nazareth, obviously, ya bunch of heathens!

Jesus of Nazareth with a pasty white, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon Jesus Christ. Imagine the shitstorm this casting would cause today!

Does anybody have some aspirin? My head is killing me right now!

A Town Like Alice - another Australian mini-series with Bryan Brown, based on Nevil Shute's novel.

[quote] Jesus of Nazareth with a pasty white, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon Jesus Christ. Imagine the shitstorm this casting would cause today!

Did this actor end up committing suicide? Not very Christlike.

IA R2. V was way ahead of its time. It would still be totally relevant today, maybe more so.

Hands of a Stranger with Beverly D'Angelo was absolutely chilling.

I was a kid when V came out and I loved it. Well, I loved the first two miniseries. The short-lived weekly series that followed was shit.

The premise of the show was quite chilling. It could totally work today, with a few minor tweaks.

To R35 V was already rebooted in 2009. I liked it!

I didn't like the reboot of V at all, it just didn't have the magic of the original. It was too glossy and glamorous and everybody looked perfect. The original V was gritty and very real. You could totally believe it was happening, it looked like the real world.

The OTHER Scruples!

[quote]Is the Barbara Hutton mini-series any good?

Not really. Farrah Fawcett wasn’t a terribly interesting actress, usually.

R39 Agreed. Her best was The Burning Bed, but that wasn't a miniseries

Chiefs, with Charlton Heston, Billy Dee Williams, and Brad Davis

[quote]R40 Agreed. Her best was The Burning Bed, but that wasn't a miniseries.

Right. Fawcett got attention for those “shocking,” violent projects.

She was decent in MURDER IN TEXAS (1981) and really surprised people by being fairly natural... and wearing her famous mane in a ponytail (!) But it certainly wasn’t a performance any other professional actress was incapable of.

If Tomorrow Comes starring Madolyn Smith (from Urban Cowboy), and hot and sexy Tom Berringer with David Keith. It is a densely packed thriller in 3 parts.

The lead character is wrongly convicted and sent to a brutal prison in Louisiana. The two top dykes who battle over her there are wonderfully played by Susan Tyrell and CCH Pounder. She gets revenge on the people who ruined her perfect life and becomes a dazzling and sophisticated international jewel thief.

The most HOMOSEXUAL miniseries EVA- Little Gloria / Happy At Last (1982)

Texas Justice, with Peter Strauss and Heather Locklear

"Murder in Texas", with Sam Elliott, Farrah Fawcett, Katharine Ross and Andy Griffith.

Our Faye IS “Evita Peron” (1981)

This vox pop about Sins and Peter the Great (with Vanessa Redgrave) is a bit chucklesome.

East of Eden (1981), which covers the entire book as opposed to the well-known James Dean film, which covers just the second half. Of course, it provides the backstory of Cal's parents -- pious Adam (Timothy Bottoms) and evil sociopath Cathy/Kate (Jane Seymour).

Jane Seymour is so beautiful in this, and plays the hell out of Cathy -- I believe she won an Emmy.

"WHICH ONE OF YOU BITCHES IS MY MOTHER?"

I agree with above posters who picked If Tomorrow Comes. Madolyn Smith was gorgeous and so good as Tracy Whitney, who goes from convicted murderer to international jewel thief. Tom Berenger is very hot as Jeff Stevens. The two leads had excellent chemistry. It was a fun romp through Europe and total escapist fun.

I also liked I'll Take Manhattan with Valerie Bertenelli as Maxi Amberville, and Julianne Moore in a small role as her best friend India. Very good casting in this one as well. Francesca Annis played Valerie's cold, distant mother who falls for her father's brother (father played by Barry Bostwick, and his brother played by Perry King). p There were so many others--Shogun, The Thornbirds, Sins, Lace, etc. I went to Catholic School. The nuns told us we'd go to hell if we watched The Thornbirds. They guaranteed we'd watch it with that kind of talk! I remember one called Deceptions with Stephanie Powers as twins and, of course, Barry Bostwick as one of the twins husbands. The twins decide to change lives for a little while, but all goes awry when one is killed.

I miss those escapist, fun miniseries. With streaming services, they've kind of come back but now they're 6-10 hour long episodes instead of three or four parters of two hours apiece.

As a child, I remember all those James Clavell books were popular. How was the series Shogun? I was too young to watch it.

[quote]This vox pop about Sins and Peter the Great (with Vanessa Redgrave) is a bit chucklesome.

The woman with the blue hat at 1.16 is amazing.

Does anyone remember Judith Krantz's We'll Meet Again, starring Michael York, Hugh Grant, intergenerational power couple Maxwell Caulfield and Juliet Mills, miniseries regular Barry Bostwick and Courtney Cox as Marie-Frederique de Lancel?

The suits at NBC strongly urged the producers of PRINCESS DAISY to consider Ted Danson for the Patrick Shannon role, but they scoffed, wouldn't hear of it. "The bartender guy on CHEERS? He's just a sitcom actor." The producers wanted noted thespian Robert Urich, of VEGA$ fame.

It was 1982. CHEERS was a first-year sitcom that no one watched. Ted Danson wasn't a household name, yet....but he was about to be. Within a year, CHEERS was a huge hit, and Danson had earned an Emmy nom for SOMETHING ABOUT AMELIA.

It became a running joke with my dad (who knew the producers) for years afterward. Any time Ted Danson's name was mentioned: "Well, he's no Bob Urich...."

"Rage of Angels" (1983) - starring "Queen of the Miniseries" Jaclyn Smith.

Yes R54, my favorite one, just rewachted it during lockdown.

Also Queenie, Harem, The Long Hot Summer and The Last Frontier (also Australian with Linda Evans in the lead.

Lace 2: Electric Boogaloo

This is Doug Davidson, who played the slutty model who seduced the gay brother in I'll Take Manhattan at his uncle/father's request.

As a kid I LOVED “The Jewel in the Crown”. I thought it was so dramatic and beautiful.

[quote] How was the series Shogun?

It was actually really good, not campy. I recommend it.

I really enjoyed the miniseries A Year in the Life, which followed a Seattle family over the period of a year. It was so popular it later became a series (although not a good one).

Richard Kiley & Eva Marie Saint were the parents, and David Oliver (a cute actor who would later die of AIDS) played one of the sons, with Sarah Horse-ica Parker as his GF.

The Prize Pulitzer with DL faces Perry King, Chynna Phillips and Courtney Cox was ripped from the headlines and should’ve been a mini series. Fun trash!

The Scarlett O'Hara War with Sharon Gless as Carole Lombard and Barrie Youngfellow as Joan Crawford

Fresno with Carol Burnett, Lloyd Bridges

I'll Take Manhattan with Valerie Bertinelli and Perry King

Amerika with Christine Lahti where the Russians take over America.

Hollywood Wives with Angie Dickinson, Joanna Cassidy, Candace Bergen, and Suzanne Somers and a theme song by Laura Branigan!

King with Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson

Captains and the Kings with Patty Duke

I was just about to mention the nighttime soap parody "Fresno". In addition to Burnett as the "matriarch", there's Charles Grodin as "the heel" (constantly having drinks tossed in his face -- even by his own toddler), Teri Garr as his sex-starved wife, and Gregory Harrison as the perpetually-shirtless "hunk".

[quote]Liked the RtE series much better than the miniseries.

I think both the 1983 and 1986 versions of 'Return to Eden' are equally as good. Sometimes craptastic, sometimes brilliant. The acting and writing are about on par, ludicrous but fun. The 1986 version trades in the gothic feel of the mini series for a slicker, more commercial approach similar to Dallas and Dynasty. The photography of both is gorgeous, one captures the raw and dangerous beauty of the Northern Territory, the other the hedonistic and optimistic energy of boom town Sydney.

Wendy Hughes unfortunately did not return for the 1986 series. She went on to film regal lady period dramas in which she was always typecast after EDEN. That makes her role as the hot-blooded bimbo and femme fatale Jilly so delicious. James Reyne does not return in the series, he did not think he had a future in acting, even though he was very good in the mini-series. The replacements are great, fortunately the very suave Daniel Abineri is the new villain Jake Saunders, and Peta Toppano chews up miles of scenery as the new Jilly.

Fatal Vision which began my decades long crush on Gary Cole.

The Deliberate Stranger which ended my crush on Mark Harmon - he was too (creepily) good at portraying Ted Bundy.

Not one in particular, but the movies and miniseries that were part of the Danielle Steele/NBC collaboration of the late 80’s/early 90’s.

The Sun Also Rises with DL fave Hart Bochner

Scarlett, the Gone With the Wind sequel. Featuring everyone from Stephen "Pedo" Collins to Esther Rolle to John Gielgud

It's slightly embarrassing but it was If Tomorrow Comes that made me start practicing tai chi and began my journey into Eastern religions which ended up with me becoming a Hinduist apprentice monk for a very short while. The series was obviously based on a Sidney Sheldon novel which I knew were total garbage (I did hungrily read likewise trashy but more adult Harold Robbins for wanking purposes though) but the show just clicked with me. I had been bullied at school and seeing the character of Tracy Whitney going through the same in the prison and overcoming her bullies by learning tai chi and beating the cunts properly up felt like the retribution I wasn't able to give to my bullies.

I watched proabably all tv mini-series that were shown here when I was a kid, usually with my parents. I remember being so embarrassed watching Lace with them since the daughter searching for her mom was a porn star. That probably taught be me to start recording possibly problematic shows and watch them later by myself after school. I vaguely remember many of the shows mentioned here but ones that really stand out were V (everyone talked about it at school the next day), Return to Eden (gloriously trashy) and Dress Gray (Alec Baldwin was so hot and hairy and manly it was almost unbearable).

It would two whole days to run all 48 hours non-stop of Winds of War & its sequel War & Remembrance

Passion and Paradise, about the murder of Sir Harry Oakes. With Armand Assante

Washington Behind Closed Doors.

Making Watergate a soap opera. Love to see this one again. After all those years coasting in Mayberry Andy showed he could still act and Robert Vaughan began that long cycle of expertly playing a son of a bitch.

Okay, it was 1979, but I loved "The Last Convertible" with Bruce Boxleitner, Perry King and Sharon Gless. The book was good, too.

No one even mentioned "Brideshead Revisited" (1981), the greatest mini-series ever in history! I guess it's been discussed many times elsewhere. It literally changed my whole life (I'm not always sure for the better).

The Last Convertible, a lot of handsome men in that one.

V: Marc Singer...Woof! The reboot 10 or so years ago was good

North and South: Always thought James Read was sexier than Patrick Swayze.

The Thorn Birds: I cried my eyes out when Dane died in the novel. I did the same watching the miniseries

Evita Peron: Faye as the First Lady of Argentina

Inside The Third Reich: Blythe Danner as Albert Speer's wife

Goliath Awaits: Mark Harmon goes diving for Emma Samms

From the 70s:

Holocaust: Meryl Streep in a rare TV role before she hit the Big Time.

Captains and the Kings: Perry King was so handsome.

Moviola, Evita Peron and The Thorn Birds are a Travilla Trifecta.

I remember being in HS and everyone talking in the school halls about the "which one of you bitch's is my mother?" from Lace. So many trashtastic novels made into mini-series in the 80s

The Two Mrs Grenvilles, based on a book by Dominick Dunne that was a thinly-veiled recounting of the infamous Woodward murder, and starring Ann-Margret and Claudette Colbert in her final role.

[quote]It's slightly embarrassing but it was If Tomorrow Comes that made me start practicing tai chi and began my journey into Eastern religions which ended up with me becoming a Hinduist apprentice monk for a very short while.

That sentence just got more eyebrow-raising with every word, and I salute you. It's beyond MARY! into a league of its own. I'd love to meet you!

I can't remember tv shows I watched six months ago. Yet DLers can remember trifling details from tv shows from forty years ago.

[quote]How was the series Shogun? I was too young to watch it.

It was outstanding. And I'll never forget that shocking, unexpected moment in Part 1 that made my mother scream her head off. We couldn't believe they showed that on network television (I don't want to say specifically what it was for anyone who has never seen it).

[quote]starring "Queen of the Miniseries" Jaclyn Smith

I think Lindsay Wagner also briefly had this title after the success of "Scruples" and "Princess Daisy."

Has anyone mentioned "Masada"? That was also a really good one on ABC.

I really think miniseries are such a lost art form. Taking a best-selling novel and making a sweeping, multi-night event out of it with huge stars on a major television network ... those were the days.

Were you guys all adults when these 80s miniseries aired, or kids?

R85, they still do multi-part series on cable and streaming. Just not really on the networks anymore

Nobody under 50 watches the big three networks anymore. I couldn't even tell you what 90% of the network shows are.

[quote] Nobody under 50 watches the big three networks anymore.

See what happens when the networks give up on the mini-series

R86, "Shogun" was in 1980 when I was 15. I think "Masada" was in 1981.

This would probably have been a good one.Rock Hudson as the President of the United States thinking of the unthinkable and Cathy Lee Crosby as the intelligence officer craving one last minute of love.

Nutcracker: Money, Madness & Murder

FATAL VISION. I always thought Gary Cole was hot and he would be huge.

Too bad he's only known for the "TPS reports" from Office Space.

R73 Another great political mini-series, this one is a pulpy thriller written by Steve Sohmer (Mr. Dee Dee Halls).

Sally Crane, played by Linda Kozlowski is a piece of work, blonde, ambitious, nothing will stop her from getting what she wants. A wolf in sheep's clothing. I wonder who she was based on?

Was Kane and Abel big in the US? Sam Neill was a childhood crush. Jeffrey Archer is now a punchline to a joke in the UK - more famous for lying about prostitutes and going to prison as a result than he is for his writing.

I can’t believe no one has mentioned one of the first memorable, well-received epic miniseries, “Rich Man, Poor Man” with ne plus ultra Bear icon Ed Asner!

R86, from grade school in the 1970s, junior high and high school from the early to mid-1980s, and college until the early 1990s, I loved watching mini-series. As R85 mentions, doing a sweeping story over multiple nights with big stars (for the times) on one of the big three networks usually captured the nation's attention. Think of shows like Roots, which was so huge and everyone talked about it. That tradition lasted up until the 1990s when they started to fade.

R96, it's from '76. I'm sure most of us know the series very well.

[quote]Were you guys all adults when these 80s miniseries aired, or kids?

I was 12 when I'll Take Manhattan was on and a similar age when I watched Lace, which my mother had already seen and said was really good.

My mother had (and still has) great taste in tv.

Malibu--what a cast including James Coburn, George Hamilton, Susan Dey, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and Jenilee Harrison.

Speaking of Princess Daisy, whatever happened to Meret Van Kemp who was in the title role?

CBS promo for "Scruples" in 1980:

Trailer for "Shogun" (1980):

ABC 1981 promo for "Masada":

The Thorn Birds

V

Lace - "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" is probably one of the best lines ever.

Shogun

North & South

The Jewel in the Crown

Princess Daisy, Scruples and Mistral's daughter (Judith Krantz was the miniseries queen)

Why did the networks stop making miniseries? They were wildly popular and huge in the ratings for years and then the networks just stopped doing them.

Ah, Princess Daisy. I was 13 when it was on. I fantasized about having Rupert Everett (yeah, I know) force himself on me in a field of daisies. In my mind I wasn’t a 13 year old boy, mind you, I was Princess Daisy.

The Winds Of War and War and Remembrance seem like they would be good viewing right now given lockdown and running out of things to watch, but I can't find either one on any of the streaming sites.

Apparently Seth MacFarlane is going to do a remake of The Winds of War (wish I was kidding)

Thinking about it in the mid 80s TBS would play a miniseries episode every afternoon. That's where I initially saw Centennial. Others were shown but that's the only title that comes to me.

Looking a bit further it was 1987.

Check out the Scruples reboot that ABC couldn’t will to happen.

I saw the pilot! Natalie Portman was one of the producers. Scruples was bought for her to develop as a feature but it didn’t work. Can you imagine? So ABC shot a pilot nobody wanted in 2012. It was so trashy and fast paced, think Paper Dolls meets Revenge. Plus Lindsay Wagner from the original mini series does an expert voice over narration. Write your local congressman to get the pilot released!

"Haywire", based on Brooke Hayward's book about her dysfunctional family.

Dazzle with Lisa Hartman Black

[quote]North and South: Always thought James Read was sexier than Patrick Swayze.

Same here.