Video: The Most Everything Mini-Series

The era that TV historians may one day call the Age of the Mini-Series began in January 1977. That was when ABC telecast an eight-night adaptation of Alex Haley’s Roots and changed the face of television. Roots proved that TV dramas, once confined to neat two-hour blocks, could draw huge audiences when stretched into week-long programming “events.” Not all the mini-series that followed Roots were hits, but a few — Holocaust in 1978, Shogun in 1980, The Thorn Birds in 1983 — have been among the most watched TV programs ever.

The event that TV historians may one day call the Last Gasp of the Mini- Series will come next week. That is when ABC launches the biggest, most expensive, most just-about-everything-else mini-series in TV history: Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance. A sequel to Wouk’s The Winds of War, which drew vast ratings back in 1983, the drama will spend 32 hours (17 1/2 this month, an additional 14 or so next spring) recounting America’s experience in World War II, mostly through the eyes of a fictional naval officer, Victor (“Pug”) Henry, and his family.

A lot has happened to TV since Pug and his clan last faded from the screen. Network audiences have dropped precipitately, and mini-series can no longer count on big audiences. What’s more, the rising cost of these productions — and the fact that they usually do badly in reruns — have made them poor investments. The networks, as a result, have largely abandoned them in favor of more modest four-and six-hour dramas. War and Remembrance is an anachronism even before it airs. “It’s hard to say ‘never,’ ” says ABC Entertainment president Brandon Stoddard, “but it’s very unlikely we’ll ever see a story told with this magnitude again.”

Some ABC executives may regret that they are telling this one. In selling ABC the rights to his 1,042-page tome, author Wouk (who also co-wrote the teleplay) demanded stringent restrictions on advertising. No commercials for personal-care products such as laxatives and foot powder. No commercial breaks longer than two minutes. Perhaps most galling to the network, no promotional spots for other ABC shows except at the beginning and end of each episode.

At a cost of $110 million, War and Remembrance will wind up losing the network at least $20 million, ABC executives calculate. Still, if it achieves the average 21 rating that has been promised to major advertisers, the series will be counted a success. If it does significantly better than that, it may even rekindle network interest in these extravagant sagas.

If not, future excavators can pore over the bones of War and Remembrance and see (in the fall chapters, at least) the definitive example of a once flourishing breed: a lumbering but amiable dinosaur, equal parts history and hokum, spectacle and soap opera. The historical narrative plays best, as the series provides a lucid account of the key battles and decisions on which the war turned. It also dramatizes, with chilling bluntness, the Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz, as well as the slaughter of Jews at Babi Yar. Few lines on network TV are as shocking as the remark of a Nazi officer on hearing the wails from inside a gas chamber: “It sounds like a synagogue.”

As usual with such TV epics, however, the fly-on-the-wall scenes with famous figures are stilted and unconvincing. “Franklin, we shall have that evil man!” announces a determined Churchill after a wartime meeting with Roosevelt. Replies F.D.R.: “I believe we shall, Winston.” Ralph Bellamy, 84, who first played F.D.R. 30 years ago in Sunrise at Campobello, seems a bit creaky for another round with the cigarette holder. Nor is Robert Morley, 80, remotely believable as a globe-trotting BBC war correspondent. As for Robert Mitchum, back again as Pug Henry, his performance is mainly a series of glum, hound-dog stares.

Among the cast’s octogenarians, John Gielgud fares best as a Jewish author trying to escape from Europe with his niece, Pug’s daughter-in-law (Jane Seymour). Naive, stubborn and rather dotty, Gielgud grows in stature as the pillars of his ordered world are toppled one by one. Most of the other personal stories in War and Remembrance are drab and attenuated. A few major characters meet untimely deaths, but the tragedies seem inserted merely for an emotional jolt and a weak nod at “realism”: a glimpse of grieving loved ones, then on with the show.

And it does go on. By the end of the fall installment, the series has only reached July 1943. That’s roughly one hour for each month of the war; there are college history courses that move faster. By hour nine or ten, the attractions have been reduced mainly to the occasional scenes with Adolf Hitler, played with eye-popping flamboyance by Steven Berkoff.

Still, worse mini-series have managed to entrance the nation — The Winds of War, for one — and Capital Cities Communications may have been right to gamble shortly after it took over the network in 1986. One of its first decisions was whether to pull the plug on the project and take a $17 million loss. Recalls Stoddard: “We sat down at a meeting, and I said, ‘Hi, how are you? Do you want to spend $100 million?’ ” The decision to go ahead, he asserts, was “an act of tremendous courage on their part.”

Getting it finished was an act of tremendous perseverance on the part of Dan Curtis, the burly, tough-talking director and executive producer who spent five years on the project. Locations ranged from the waters off Hawaii (for the Pacific battle scenes) to the death camp at Auschwitz, the first time a dramatic-film crew has been allowed there. Shooting had to be stopped for one week when Curtis caught pneumonia; at another point, he had to squelch a near mutiny of crew members, who were reluctant to go to Poland after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. Says Curtis: “It was a life adventure.”

Some TV insiders still hold out hope that it won’t be the last. “A huge performance would be a disappointment to ABC’s competitors from a ratings standpoint,” says Pat Faulstich, CBS’s vice president of TV movies and mini- series. “But it would be cause for celebration in restoring a unique program form to network TV.” Translation: if ABC’s War draws a big enough crowd, the mini-series’ last gasp may turn out to be a breath of new life.