Me too. But I’m still going with From the Earth to the Moon.
But speaking of the '70s, I have a line from Centennial stuck in my head now.
I’ll bet you didn’t see Caligula cutting open his sister and devouring their fetus, or the head of the Praetorian Guard plotting his assassination.
My favourite miniseries is from the BBC, 1974 and is called FALL of EAGLES.
You might not even have seen that in the UK. Wikipedia says,
As alluded to in the 2002 documentary I, Claudius: A Television Epic, the original version of episode 8, “Zeus, by Jove!”, included a closing shot after Caligula has cut the fetus from Drusilla’s womb, which was considered very shocking. It was therefore re-edited several times, even on the day of its premiere, by order of Bill Slater, then head of Serials Department. After initial broadcast and a rerun two days later, the scene was edited again, so that the episode is now “somewhat attenuated”. The “slightly nastier version” of the episode’s closing (a scene that used “makeup on her belly”) was allegedly shown twice in 1976, but is now lost since the BBC no longer has a copy of it. Pulman noted that the original script for the episode ended with “a long shot showing the butchered woman hanging on a chariot”.
This is an understatement. In the PBS version, there’s some very clumsy editing after it’s clear what Caligula intends to do. Then all we see is Claudius banging on the door and reacting in horror when he views what’s just happened.
I’m baffled as to why the plotting of the assassination was edited. The full version explained why it went down the way it did, and why only one of the assassins was executed.
Another great miniseries. My History professor at the time called it “Superb!”
I’ll take your word for it. I saw the miniseries and read the book but both of these happened back in the seventies and I’ve forgotten most of the details.
On the issue of what counts as a miniseries, I’d argue that a miniseries needs an ongoing narrative line that runs through the episodes.
I feel that Fawlty Towers, for example, doesn’t qualify as a miniseries because of this. You can watch the episodes out of order and you’re not going to get confused by the story. But if you watch the episodes of I, Claudius out of order, you’re going to be asking things like “Why is this guy alive? Wasn’t he killed two episodes ago? And when did this guy become Emperor? What happened to the other Emperor?”
I might be misremembering, but didn’t network miniseries in the 1970s usually run over consecutive nights wrapping up in a week or less?
Holocaust and Shogun certainly did. I remember the Asian History professor at my college setting up a special room for us students to come in and watch the latter every night it was on.
Roots ran for eight consecutive nights when it first aired in 1977. A lot of people, including me, watched every night. As I recall, it was Sunday through Sunday.
I enjoyed watching Roots. My parents let me stay up late and watch most of the episodes. However, I recall something about having tests the next school day and on a couple occasions my parents wouldn’t let me stay up to watch the whole episode. I was super pissed at the time. Even now as a 62 year old I have to question their parental wisdom on that call.
Has anyone rewatched Roots fairly recently? Have to remember it ran a half century ago…how well does it hold up now?
I have very vivid memories of Roots although I haven’t seen it since its original run. There was a lot of morning after discussion among all my friends in junior high but I don’t remember any classroom discussion. The (double standard) National Geographic style nudity in the first episode generated zero comment among 13 year-olds which surprises me in hindsight. The slave ship scenes were the most impactful, I think.
I watched it not too long ago. Every TV star of the era wanted to be in it, so it was a little distracting to see OJ Simpson, Lorne Greene, etc in every other scene. But I think it was very well done overall. Hard to watch in places, naturally.
I was living in England when Roots first aired. I had read about it before it was broadcast in the UK shortly thereafter. I believe I watched it as guest in the home of an acquaintance. As I recall, it generated a fair amount of discussion among the Brits, both on TV and in the press.
Shogun came on in the early '80s, as I recall. Not in the '70s, but not long afterward either.
We actually got class credit for watching Roots. Being able to tell my parents watching TV was an assignment virtually guaranteed that Roots would be in my top five favorites!
I saw “Roots” for the first time about five years ago. It was a little jarring to see Chicken George in a positive light in these modern times, but it was a different time.
I believe Roots was the first American miniseries to be run on consecutive nights. Prior to that, the practice had been to run miniseries one night a week on consecutive weeks.
Rich Man, Poor Man, for example, had run on seven consecutive Mondays.
I watched the newest version of The Stand and then went back and rewatched the original. The decision to make it nonlinear doomed the updated version. The casting was decent but I give an edge to the original, mostly because of Gary Sinese. But what really stood out was how awful Molly Ringwald was. Her acting was worse than the special effects.
I don’t know if I understand what point you are trying to make. The Pacific was certainly about real-life combat Marines. I’ve driven past the statue of one of them hundreds of times in my life (and over the bridge named for him and past the gas station that stands where his house used to be). BoB had the advantage of being able to follow one unit from the beginning to end. The Pacific had to follow three different people with some overlap to get a storyline throughout the war.