Those Fabulous Miniseries

[xab]

I just finished the first hour of Hollywood Wives.... It's wonderful trash! I wish I had have watched it on DVD in better quality instead of YouTube.

Trash... ? I read the book first and the tv series was a big disapointment to me... The choice of Stephanie Powers for Montana was the miscast of the year ... It was quite tiedious and uptight compared to the book... And Andrew Stevens wig is ridiculous... Try " Hollywood Husband", which is not a sequel, but as exciting as the Wives.

 

[Alexis]

Trash... ? I read the book first and the tv series was a big disapointment to me... The choice of Stephanie Powers for Montana was the miscast of the year ... It was quite tiedious and uptight compared to the book... And Andrew Stevens wig is ridiculous... Try " Hollywood Husband", which is not a sequel, but as exciting as the Wives.

Yes, it's disgustingly trashy but very fun. I don't mind trashy by the way.

 

[Willie Oleson]

No movie could ever be as trashy as the real Hollywood.

 

[JROG]

I recently got HOLLYWOOD WIVES on DVD. I should watch it soon (I read the book years ago).

 

[Willie Oleson]

I think Hollywood Wives is a fairly decent production within its genre. Obviously it's not "I, Claudius" but it's a fun overdose of 80s glossiness.
It's better than Lucky Chances although "Chances" is probably Collins' best work. "Lucky" was a nice sequel, can't say the same about the other Santangelo stories that followed after that.

Dominic Dunne's "The Winners" is one of the better Hollywood stories (imho)

 

[xab]

Yes, it's disgustingly trashy but very fun. I don't mind trashy by the way.

I don't mind either I guess you're alluding to the book? Because HW -the series is as trashy as The bold and the beautiful...

 

[xab]

I recently got HOLLYWOOD WIVES on DVD. I should watch it soon (I read the book years ago).

If you enjoyed the book as much as I did ( and a few others by Jackie C. ) you'll be surprised... It's not that unfaithful to the book but it's like "50 shades of grey" revisited by the Hays Code... It is very clean, very polished... This is definitely not HBO stuff... Rather Dysney Chanel ... And the twist of the twin brothers is spoiled by Andrew Stevens playing both parts...

 

[Alexis]

I don't mind either I guess you're alluding to the book? Because HW -the series is as trashy as The bold and the beautiful...

I have never read the book. I thought the miniseries was very trashy though. I don't mean racy when I say trashy I just mean not very well written and riddled with clichés and plots that defy logic. It's laughable at times.

 

[pete lashmar]

I used to love the mini series - my favourites (in no particular order) are Roots, Shogun & "V" & Return to Eden - which were all event TV at the time they were screened.

Both "V" & Return to Eden eventually sent to series but were down right dreadful - just goes to show that making a successful Mini Series is a masterly craft.

 

[kenneth]

I recently saw Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue which was a lot of fun. Also Poor Little Rich Girl, the true story of Barbara Hutton, whom I'll bet was quite an inspiration in the writing of Erica Kane.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Both "V" & Return to Eden eventually sent to series but were down right dreadful

Yes, V had almost nothing to do with the original premise but I can appreciate it for its bizarre camp.
RTE the series could have been interesting if they hadn't tried so hard to make it look like an American series. It looks forced and unnatural and unintentionally hilarious (but not in a funny way).

SHOGUN is one of the very few mini-series I've never seen. My parents loved it, maybe I should give it a try.

 

[pete lashmar]

Yes, V had almost nothing to do with the original premise but I can appreciate it for its bizarre camp.
RTE the series could have been interesting if they hadn't tried so hard to make it look like an American series. It looks forced and unnatural and unintentionally hilarious (but not in a funny way).

SHOGUN is one of the very few mini-series I've never seen. My parents loved it, maybe I should give it a try.

Shogun hasn't even dated due to it being a period series anyway, I'd recommend it for a Sunday afternoon.

 

[Toni]

I recently saw Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue which was a lot of fun. Also Poor Little Rich Girl, the true story of Barbara Hutton, whom I'll bet was quite an inspiration in the writing of Erica Kane.

I remember I watched "79 Park Avenue" in the early 80´s and it was indeed a lot of fun, even for a tender teenager like moi! There are a lot of lesser-known miniseries from the 80´s that are really entertaining: "Rich Man Poor Man" (especially the first part before becoming a continuing soap the next season) "Seventh Avenue", "The Captains and the Kings", "The Last Convertible", "Evergreen"...apart from the amazing trio that was "Roots", "Holocaust" and "Brideshead Revisited".

Then something happened...and they filled the TV schedule with trashy miniseries with "Sex", "Love", "Power" and other emoti-words in their titles. Not that they weren´t enjoyable or funny, but also hard to take seriously!

It lasted around a decade...and the 90´s brought a boring repetitive touch of "dignity" to the multi-hour TV movies. I´d only save this one, very underrated. This one was, like Mandy Winger, "trash with class":

 

[Willie Oleson]

even for a tender teenager like moi

A tender teenager, Toni?

and they filled the TV schedule with trashy miniseries with "Sex", "Love", "Power"

Yeah, the ones from the late 80s/1990s aren't my favourites.
Dazzle, Roses Are For The Rich, To Be The Best and The Secrets Of Lake Success weren't great stories to begin with, but somehow the mini-series format had also lost its magic.
Sometimes they just split the movie in two parts and called it a mini-series.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Hate to say it but I didn't enjoy this mini-series at all. The characters were boring, the story was boring, they were travelling back and forth (I don't know why) some things happened (I don't know why) and then the second part just fizzled out, well let me tell you 4 hours of fizzling out is a looong time.
Bah, 9 precious hours completely wasted - but that's the price I'll pay for ignoring my instinct.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I'm rather partial to the two-part 1991 filming of Dominick Dunne's AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN. Filmed at DYNASTY's Filoli mansion (and gives us a sense of what DYNASTY could have felt like if they'd done even just a little location shooting after the pilot), the estate named "Clouds" here, a wealthy L.A. oil tycoon, Jules Mendelson (Jason Robards) develops a relationship with a "very young, very pretty, very common" waitress named Flo (Rebecca De Mornay) which doesn't much please his brittle society wife (Jill Eikenberry) whose gay best friend is shot to death several times by a mysterious assailant yet his demise is "incontrovertibly" ruled "a suicide," and handsome Hollywood screenwriter (Peter Gallagher) figures out something's amiss.

Co-starring Chelsea Field, Roddy McDowall as a bitchy tabloid reporter, Alex Rocco, Chad Lowe, Roy Thinnes, Grant Cramer, Joseph Bologna. Elaine Stritch got an Emmy nomination for playing Elaine Stritch.

The NYT said about the book and its author: "This is a smart novel because Dominick Dunne understands the distance between Los Angeles society and the spicy bazaars of Hollywood. And what makes Mr. Dunne not only first-rate, but also different from other writers who write about the very rich in late 20th-century America, is his knowledge that there's more to it than getting the labels and the street names right. He shows he knows by the way he tells you how his people feel, the way they listen, the things they cover up and the things they don't. He's lived in L.A. and gets it right, but he has the perspective you only get when you leave. He knows every story there is to tell, precisely how it happened and why it happened. He also knows there's nothing up there in society to envy."

That said, the cleverer Gore Vidal thought Dunne ridiculous.

 

[Alexis]

I'm rather partial to the two-part 1991 filming of Dominick Dunne's AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN. Filmed at DYNASTY's Filoli mansion (and gives us a sense of what DYNASTY could have felt like if they'd done even just a little location shooting after the pilot), the estate named "Clouds" here, a wealthy L.A. oil tycoon, Jules Mendelson (Jason Robards) develops a relationship with a "very young, very pretty, very common" waitress named Flo (Rebecca De Mornay) which doesn't much please his brittle society wife (Jill Eikenberry) whose gay best friend is shot to death several times by a mysterious assailant yet his demise is "incontrovertibly" ruled "a suicide," and handsome Hollywood screenwriter (Peter Gallagher) figures out something's amiss.

Co-starring Chelsea Field, Roddy McDowall as a bitchy tabloid reporter, Alex Rocco, Chad Lowe, Roy Thinnes, Grant Cramer, Joseph Bologna. Elaine Stritch got an Emmy nomination for playing Elaine Stritch.

The NYT said about the book and its author: "This is a smart novel because Dominick Dunne understands the distance between Los Angeles society and the spicy bazaars of Hollywood. And what makes Mr. Dunne not only first-rate, but also different from other writers who write about the very rich in late 20th-century America, is his knowledge that there's more to it than getting the labels and the street names right. He shows he knows by the way he tells you how his people feel, the way they listen, the things they cover up and the things they don't. He's lived in L.A. and gets it right, but he has the perspective you only get when you leave. He knows every story there is to tell, precisely how it happened and why it happened. He also knows there's nothing up there in society to envy."

That said, the cleverer Gore Vidal thought Dunne ridiculous.

I think I read somewhere that Nolan Miller did the wardrobe but I cant remember. He's not listed on the IMDb page, but nobody is? If it was him he did Soapdish and The Reunion that same year too.

 

[Willie Oleson]

"And what makes Mr. Dunne not only first-rate, but also different from other writers"

Interesting. That's also how Jackie Collins, Rona Jaffe, Jeffrey Archer, Arthur Hailey and James Michener are described on the back cover of some of the books I have .

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I think I read somewhere that Nolan Miller did the wardrobe but I cant remember. He's not listed on the IMDb page, but nobody is? If it was him he did Soapdish and The Reunion that same year too.

Indeed he did.

Interesting. That's also how Jackie Collins, Rona Jaffe, Jeffrey Archer, Arthur Hailey and James Michener are described on the back cover of some of the books I have .

Heh. Probably. Jackie is a crap writer though -- I think she's just awful. Bad dialogue, bad scenes, bad characters, bad structure -- "bad" as in lousy and not naughty.

The TV miniseries are often an improvement on her books.

 

[Alexis]

Indeed he did.

Such a shame.... Nolan at Filoli and yet Dynasty being filmed God knows where.

I wonder did an Inconvenient Woman have a role in Dynasty not being filmed there?