This is the first of five episodes we’ll be covering which deal with miniseries, rather than theatrical films. The idea here is that when television decides they’re going to do “events” and create these limited series (“limited” in the sense that there’s a fixed number of episodes and no more are on the table), budgets tend to go up and the caliber of actor you get improves as well.
But for all that, we’re going to start with a miniseries that was also a theatrical film. Fanny and Alexander (1982) was written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, was conceived and created as a miniseries, and edited that way with a run time of 312 minutes total. Afterward, this was cut down to 188 minutes for theatrical release. This version–which does, in fact, suffer from the cuts–actually managed to get released first.
From time to time, theaters will show the 312-minute version, and that’s the version we’re discussing in our episode. In Sweden, it got positive reviews and did well at the box office; while it also got good reviews in the United States, it was overshadowed by films such as Return of the Jedi, Trading Places and Terms of Endearment, among others.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
In our next episode, we’ll be looking at a miniseries that was certainly considered a major television event when it first came out. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you won’t want to leave the world of Lonesome Dove. Join us, won’t you?
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