David Lynch? 
My mom had many of the books, so I first read them when I was like 10 or 12 (mid to late 80s). You are the second person I know of, because I met a lady on a listserv I was on once who had read Celia Garth, but no others.
I just did a search of her and found out she wrote some mysteries too. I never knew that. Maybe I should try to find them for a decent price somewhere!
The Russian/Japanese naval battle at Tushima , or the Monitor versus the Virginia.
Oh yeah , I almost forgot the spanish v american war
Declan
I came in here to mention Flashman.
I cannot imagine any star, past or present, who fits the role of this scallywag, however.
Because I am a sucker for all things Romantical, I think HBO should do a Jane Austen festival. (except they would probably Americanize it somehow and I would have to get all stabby.)
They did a melodroamatic TV-movie about the Monitor and the Virginia back in 1990 called Ironclads:
Don;'t hold your breath for a US movie on the Straits of Tsushima. But there’s aa Japanese documentary on it, according to the iMDB:
I’d love to see a treatment of the Winter War [the USSR’s invasion of Finland, '39-'40], but I think it would be too difficult to structure it for dramatic purposes. The dominant personality involved is that of Stalin, and I’d want it thoroughly grounded in Kremlin politics and strategizing – but that necessitates a Soviet P.O.V. and may inadvertently encourage some identification with Stalin.
If you tell it from the Finnish P.O.V., the action more or less begins when the tanks roll in, and who do you identify with? The real heroes were the Finns as a whole (albeit with a few famous snipers, who would be the most appealing central protagonists on the Finn side). Much of the populace was beating strategic retreats, heading for the woods, taking up rifles and sniping at the Russians (and all without any meaningful international support) – the kind of stuff that is perhaps best conveyed by lengthy montage sequences in a mode of socialist realism, ironically enough.
And in the end, despite exacting a 10-1 casualty ratio on the invaders, mostly through sniping and other guerrilla tactics, the sheer might of the Soviet war machine ground the Finns down to where they had to sue for peace in the spring and cede some territory. So you’d have a downer and inconclusive ending – considering the resumption of fighting in 1941, with the Finns enthusiastically cooperating with Nazi Germany to counter the Soviet threat.
Come to think about it, we *kind of * have this movie already… the “Ice Battle on the Planet Hoth” sequence from The Empire Strikes Back, although the Soviets didn’t have Imperial Walkers (nor the Finns an air force).
For those of you who love Roman Times, and who doesn’t? I would love to see the book series by Lindsey Davis , I can easily picture HBO doing a bang up job on it with help from the BBC.
I agree with Sampiro…Gone With the Wind, with all three kids and Suellen’s husband and all the plantation neighbors and Archie.
I wouldn’t mind a '30s-era Chicago gangster mini-series either, maybe with some spillover to Las Vegas.
They didn’t need an air force. They had Eino Luukkanen.
[QUOTE=MGibson]
Why not a series about pirates in the early 18th century either during or after Queen Anne’s War? /QUOTE]
Calico Jack Rackham had quite a life-- he had two women on his ship (Mary Read and Anne Bonny) disguised as men,Anne Bonny he “kidnapped” to help her out of a bad marriage. Mary Read had to reveal that she was a woman to fend off Anne Bonny’s romantic advances. They were captured with him, but neither could be hanged because they were both pregnant. Rackham himself was hung and displayed in a gibbet in Port Royal. He provided some basic inspiration for Pirates of the Caribbean, but is a lot more interesting. The three of them would make great fodder for an HBO miniseries.
i would love to see a muppets mini series. i love that show and i think it has touched sooo many people’s lives
Better still: John Maddox Roberts’ SPQR series! (But not Stephen Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa, 'cause that’s such a downer.)
Theodore Roosevelt, pulling all the good stuff from Edmund Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex, and Candice Millard’s The River of Doubt.
Sickly kid to scrappy college boxer. Young dandy in Albany alternating with buckskin-wearing cowboy and hunter. NYC Police Commissioner making midnight strolls to poke cops sleeping on duty. Vice President because his party’s machine kicked him upstairs, hating what he was doing as governor of NY. Rough Rider. Furor over inviting a black man to dinner at the White House. Convervationist. The White Fleet around the world. The Bull Moose party. Expedition down uncharted jungle river. Great stuff.
First wife and his mother dying on the same day. 
Yes, his life has a lot of stories that folks might think were added for dramatic effect if a miniseries were made. E.g.,
Gives a speech with a bullet in his chest :eek: after an assassination attempt, the bullet having been slowed down by passing through his thick speech notes and glasses case.
Unarmed, punches out a rowdy cowboy shooting up a saloon.
Njal’s Saga would make an awesome mini-series. Spanning several decades of Icelandic history, it’s got family feuds and cool Viking duals and some raiding and some ambushing and some backstabbing and some religion-converting and some law-debating and a big ol’ fire at the end. There’s even a brief interlude with a Viking zombie in there somewhere.
Viking. Zombie. Hell yeah.
The rise and fall of Rhodesia and especially the Rhodesian Bush War, with a major focus on the horse-mounted units like the Grey’s Scouts and special forces like the Rhodesian SAS and the Selous Scouts. The series would show how the fall of the Rhodesian government would lead to the collapse of law and order and the nightmare that is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Unfortunately I think this is way too un-PC to ever get made, but I can fantasize anyway.
Stanley and Livingston.
Clout: the Miniseries, an adaptation of the Royko book re the first Mayor Daley. It would cover all manner of things: JFK, the 1968 riots, the building of the city etc.
Millard Filmore: Best President Ever or America’s Cipher?
Lewis and Clark (wasn’t this done or is coming out or something?)
The Fountain of Youth guy (can’t recall name–P something)
The favorite dishes of American Presidents (and what the First Ladies’ dished up!)*
*ok, so that one’s not real serious. But I bet it would get made.
Also:
A biographical series on the great bassist Jaco Pastorius. I don’t know who on earth would play him, though, and I don’t know how they would ever be able to portray him on stage or in the studio, playing. His style was that unique.
The story of Meir Kahane, a Rabbi who was like the Jewish version of Malcolm X, and founded the JDL (Jewish Defense League.) I mean, with the Jew-controlled Hollywood, they could definitely get this one made. I think Robert Downey Jr. should play him.
How about a miniseries on the Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s? Tons of fascinating characters – Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott, Harpo Marx, Robert Benchley – plenty of laughs, tragedy, and and some sex. The film, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is, AFAIK, the only fictional depiction of it.
Although it’s been done on film a few times, I’d love to see a serious and accurate long-form treatment of the Manhattan Project.
The life of Senator Joe McCarthy could be fascinating.