Once upon a time, miniseries were one of the highlights of network television. They were huge, multi-night events that attracted tens of millions of viewers.
Epics like "Roots," "The Winds of War," "The Thorn Birds," "Shogun" and "Lonesome Dove" held viewers enthralled night after night. People planned their schedules around TV viewing.The television miniseries allowed for a unique form of filmed story-telling - long, multi-part epics that could sweep through multiple characters, sometimes through dozens of years. It was a form that couldn't be duplicated in theatrical films or in weekly TV series.
But, for the most part, the miniseries has gone the way of the variety show. They just don't exist on television anymore.
Oh, the broadcast networks tell us they still do miniseries. But, with rare exceptions, the productions that are now labeled as miniseries are nothing more than two-part TV movies.
Just look at the selection of mini-miniseries populating the current sweeps period. ABC has "Medusa's Child"; NBC brought us "House of Frankenstein 1997"; CBS scheduled a pair of longer-than-usual TV movies - "The Third Twin" and "Bella Mafia" All four are two-part, four-hour productions.
Compare that to the 12 hours of "Roots" that were broadcast over eight nights. Or the eight hours allotted to "Lonesome Dove" in 1989. Or the 10 hours of "The Thorn Birds" in 1983. Or the 16 hours of "Shogun" in 1980. Or the whopping 18 hours of "The Winds of War" in 1983.
Last season, only two miniseries went beyond two nights - "The Shining" on ABC and "The Last Don" on CBS. And they only upped the ante to three-part, six-hour presentations.
What happened? Network programmers insist that today's TV viewers don't have the attention span to watch anything that lasts more than four hours. That there's just too much competition out there to get ratings for major epics anymore.
Of course, "The Last Don" did very well indeed for CBS just six months ago, despite the "handicap" of running for six hours. ("The Shining," on the other hand, turned in rather disappointing numbers - a fact that might be attributed to ABC's overall weakness rather than the miniseries itself.)
The other side of the story is that - as is their wont - network programmers got carried away. They made the miniseries too big, too expensive and all-but killed the genre. The death of the mega-miniseries can be directly traced to the biggest and most expensive of all time - "War and Remembrance."
After the huge success of "The Winds of War" in 1983 - it remains the third-highest-rated miniseries of all time - ABC was anxious for more. And there was plenty of material out there - Herman Wouk's sequel to "Winds," "War and Remembrance."
And "War and Remembrance" was certainly on an epic scale. The saga of Pug Henry and his family in World War II ranged from Midway to Stalingrad, from the White House to horrors of Auschwitz. The completed project was so big - an incredible 29 hours - that it was actually split into two miniseries, one airing in November of 1988 and the other in May of 1989.
ABC sank more than $100 million into the project . . . and "War and Remembrance" was not a big ratings success. The numbers were mediocre at best, and the miniseries gushed red ink when it didn't perform up to expectations. (It failed to achieve the ratings levels the network has promised advertisers, forcing ABC to give "free" commercials to make up the difference.)
And networks are in the business of making money, not losing it.
The failure of "War and Remembrance" put a huge scare in the network. If they could come up with a hugely successful miniseries that ran for 10 or 12 hours, they were in great shape. But a failure could mean all those hours of weak ratings.
The risk is much less with a two-part, four-hour TV movie.
And quality does not necessarily translate into success. "War and Remembrance" was arguably a much better production than the much more successful "The Winds of War."
(Not to mention the fact that NBC has managed to attract big ratings in recent years with atrocious junk like "Asteroid" and "The Beast.")
The networks have decided that the risk is not worth the investment in major miniseries. And viewers are the real losers - the miniseries is a television art form that's all but lost.