The Television Miniseries

Television and people viewing habits have changed a lot over the years.  When I was a kid sitting down and watching television was a family event and every night had their own line up.  Today my wife and I rarely watch live television, we have an antenna with 21 channels, no cable, and we stream everything.  When we do watch live TV it's typically the news or when I watch football.

The last live TV special that we watched was Grease the Musical which aired on Fox January 31, 2016 and it was three hours long.  We loved it and was hoping Fox would so more live musicals.

Television miniseries also used to be very popular when I was kid and even into my early 20's.  I'm not talking about limited television series that have 6 - 10 episodes.  I'm talking about the television movie miniseries events like Lonesome Dove!  Originally airing over four nights in 1989 from February 5th to the 8th, each episode was 2 hours long and 26 million people tuned in to watch it!

I don't think a miniseries on network television today could draw those numbers or even half that.  Honestly I feel that miniseries that I'm talking about on network television or a thing of the past.

Many consider the first television miniseries blockbuster to be Alex Haley's Roots which aired in 1977.  Others include The Thornbirds, North & South, Centennial, The Winds or War, and more.  Most of the long works are based on books.

Centennial is 900 plus page book that my wife enjoyed and encouraged me to read.  Honestly I enjoyed many parts of the book just not all of it.  We have never watched the miniseries because at 26.5 hours over twelve episodes it's too long!

1983's V miniseries is one of my all time favorites!  It's about Alien Visitors ( hence V) that publicly have come in peace but secretly want to take over the Earth.  A sequel was released in 1984 and two television series has also been made, first in 1984 & the 2009 reboot.

Stephen King probably has had more television miniseries made out of his books than anyone.  In fact those were must see television!  I'll talk more about those in another post.

Until Next Time!