PIONEERS OF TELEVISION
PBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
SEASON FINALE: The fourth and final of this season’s documentary studies is devoted to Miniseries – but, like the other installments, dilutes the power of its subject by being maddeningly superficial. Except for a one-minute mention of NBC’s Shogun, the entire hour is devoted to three ABC miniseries: Roots, The Thorn Birds and Rich Man, Poor Man. Though all three deserve inclusion and study, this hour isn’t a history of the genre, it’s a TV fanzine. Why in the world wouldn’t you start with the real pioneers of the miniseries form? Why not salute the multi-part dramatic biographies of Abraham Lincoln and John and Quincy Adams on CBS’s Omnibus in the Fifties? Or super-early miniseries Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier on ABC’s Disneyland? Or CBS’s surreal The Prisoner series from 1968? Or the original public TV importations of The Forsyte Saga and Upstairs, Downstairs in the early Seventies? All of those miniseries predated the “pioneers” shown in this hour. What’s here isn’t worthless – but what’s missing is a shame, and a waste. Check local listings.