Post by Richard Kimble on Feb 12, 2022 22:32:36 GMT
I had never seen the massive 24 hour miniseries based on James Michener's novel, but binged on it over the past couple of weeks.
The story takes place over 200 years in a section of Colorado, from the first mountain men through traders and settlers to cowboys and trains and automobiles. The final section is set in the contemporary 1970s.
Robert Conrad plays a French Canadian trapper who becomes partners with a Scottish immigrant (Richard Chamberlain -- about a year and a half later Shogun would make him the undisputed Miniseries King). Conrad's character marries an Indian girl, and his descendants will figure in the rest of the series. This is probably the best role Conrad ever had, giving him the chance for emotional depth he never had with Jim West.
The biggest role of the series probably belonged to young pre-Trapper John MD Gregory Harrison as a Pennsylvania Mennonite who moves West and becomes a trader, then a storekeeper. He is adequate. In fact most of the younger male roles were less than excitingly cast. This was a major flaw in the cattle drive episode: Dennis Weaver and Rafael Campos were solid, but most of the other drovers looked (and sounded; accents were mostly awful) totally out of place. Greg Mullavey? The guy from Mary Hartman? Who the hell cast him as a cowboy? And much of the trail drive is devoted to the drovers sitting around the campfire laughing. You get a much more effective portrait of the drover's uneasy life from a good Rawhide rerun.
Cliff DeYoung and William Atherton both play major roles in the Old West section, and they're about on the Gregory Harrison level. This section is enlivened by some conspiring couples: first Lynn Redgrave and Timothy Dalton as English carpetbaggers hoping to exploit the land with a super-huge cattle ranch (this part also features the marvelous Clive Revill, stealing all his scenes as a dour Scottish accountant), then later Anthony Zerbe and Lois Nettleton as traveling actors who stumble into a good thing and deviously try to keep it going. The always reliable Brian Keith is around as a sheriff, matching Zerbe's scenery chewing backdrop for backdrop.
Redgrave's character lives long enough to see the changes brought by the automobile, WWI and even the Depression. A major concern of this section is the prejudice faced by Mexican farm laborers, just as Indians had faced prejudice in the generations before (curiously, the black cowboy [Glynn Turman] who goes on the cattle drive is never shown as being the target of bigotry; in fact he is even shown drinking in the local saloon, which almost certainly would not have happened in real life). This section sets up local fears about Mexicans striking and trying to form labor unions, so that you expect the next episode will deal with a labor war.
Instead, the story jumps ahead 40 years to the 1970s, and the modern town of Centennial. Unfortunately this section is the weakest of the entire series, bringing up a murder that had been committed earlier but not resolving it. Much of the running time is given over to flashbacks from previous episodes, while the rest is mostly a trial allowing for arguments about the environment. If that isn't enough, there is actually a long sequence showing the two antagonists, rancher David Janssen and crooked businessman Robert Vaughn (the kind of role he could play in his sleep) having a talky TV debate over ecology vs industry. Judging from Centennial's IMDb message board, I'm not the only one to find this climactic episode a big disappointment.
Overall, if you can overlook the big flaw (final episode) and various little ones (such as the cattle drive) Centennial is an entertaining miniseries. Who here has seen it? Or read the book? I've only read one Michener (Hawaii) but may give Centennial a shot sometime.
The story takes place over 200 years in a section of Colorado, from the first mountain men through traders and settlers to cowboys and trains and automobiles. The final section is set in the contemporary 1970s.
Robert Conrad plays a French Canadian trapper who becomes partners with a Scottish immigrant (Richard Chamberlain -- about a year and a half later Shogun would make him the undisputed Miniseries King). Conrad's character marries an Indian girl, and his descendants will figure in the rest of the series. This is probably the best role Conrad ever had, giving him the chance for emotional depth he never had with Jim West.
The biggest role of the series probably belonged to young pre-Trapper John MD Gregory Harrison as a Pennsylvania Mennonite who moves West and becomes a trader, then a storekeeper. He is adequate. In fact most of the younger male roles were less than excitingly cast. This was a major flaw in the cattle drive episode: Dennis Weaver and Rafael Campos were solid, but most of the other drovers looked (and sounded; accents were mostly awful) totally out of place. Greg Mullavey? The guy from Mary Hartman? Who the hell cast him as a cowboy? And much of the trail drive is devoted to the drovers sitting around the campfire laughing. You get a much more effective portrait of the drover's uneasy life from a good Rawhide rerun.
Cliff DeYoung and William Atherton both play major roles in the Old West section, and they're about on the Gregory Harrison level. This section is enlivened by some conspiring couples: first Lynn Redgrave and Timothy Dalton as English carpetbaggers hoping to exploit the land with a super-huge cattle ranch (this part also features the marvelous Clive Revill, stealing all his scenes as a dour Scottish accountant), then later Anthony Zerbe and Lois Nettleton as traveling actors who stumble into a good thing and deviously try to keep it going. The always reliable Brian Keith is around as a sheriff, matching Zerbe's scenery chewing backdrop for backdrop.
Redgrave's character lives long enough to see the changes brought by the automobile, WWI and even the Depression. A major concern of this section is the prejudice faced by Mexican farm laborers, just as Indians had faced prejudice in the generations before (curiously, the black cowboy [Glynn Turman] who goes on the cattle drive is never shown as being the target of bigotry; in fact he is even shown drinking in the local saloon, which almost certainly would not have happened in real life). This section sets up local fears about Mexicans striking and trying to form labor unions, so that you expect the next episode will deal with a labor war.
Instead, the story jumps ahead 40 years to the 1970s, and the modern town of Centennial. Unfortunately this section is the weakest of the entire series, bringing up a murder that had been committed earlier but not resolving it. Much of the running time is given over to flashbacks from previous episodes, while the rest is mostly a trial allowing for arguments about the environment. If that isn't enough, there is actually a long sequence showing the two antagonists, rancher David Janssen and crooked businessman Robert Vaughn (the kind of role he could play in his sleep) having a talky TV debate over ecology vs industry. Judging from Centennial's IMDb message board, I'm not the only one to find this climactic episode a big disappointment.
Overall, if you can overlook the big flaw (final episode) and various little ones (such as the cattle drive) Centennial is an entertaining miniseries. Who here has seen it? Or read the book? I've only read one Michener (Hawaii) but may give Centennial a shot sometime.
