The made-for-TV movie/miniseries would be an almost completely lost art if it weren't for HBO and the British imports served up by PBS' various Masterpiece franchises. Already this year, we have a deliciously strong contender for best-of-year (and, one imagines, Emmy) honors with Masterpiece Classic's over-too-quickly Downton Abbey.
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It wasn't the swords. It wasn't the sandals. For Rufus Sewell, the tough part was all the stinkin' mud. Playing a 12th-century stonemason in mega miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, premiering tonight on Starz at 10/9c, meant maintaining "a level of grime on my neck consistent with that of your typical farm animal," he says.
A small price, indeed, for what's shaping up to be the armor-clanking, leech-sucking, monks-a-poppin' drama of the summer. Pillars, based on Ken Follett's doorstop of a best-seller (all 973 pages of it), about the quest to build a Gothic cathedral in a fictional England of yore, runs eight hours over six Friday nights...
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The Pillars of the Earth (Friday, 10/9c, Starz) A throwback to the days when lavish miniseries ruled the airwaves, this eight-hour historical melodrama (airing over six Fridays) based on Ken Follett's best-seller juggles royal, religious and political intrigues that swirl around the building of a 12th-century cathedral. You'll meet a large cast of heroes (Donald Sutherland as an embattled nobleman, Rufus Sewell as a master builder, Matthew Macfadyen as a pious friar) and villains (most notably Deadwood's Ian McShane as a feverishly ambitious church official). Dig in...
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They really don't make them like this anymore. And we're not talking about 12th-century Gothic cathedrals. The Pillars of the Earth, a sprawling historical melodrama based on Ken Follett's mammoth bestseller, conjures nostalgic memories of the days of yore, way back in the 20th century, when networks devoted entire weeks to "event" miniseries like Shogun, The Winds of War, The Thorn Birds, Lonesome Dove, to name a memorable few—although in this case, North and South is the best comparison...
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Question: Has Julian McMahon ever been in the running to be the next Bond? He's the only actor I can think of who'd be as perfect a fit for the role as Pierce Brosnan.Answer: The legendary search for Scarlett O'Hara has nothing on the quest for Bond, James Bond. Julian McMahon, the charismatic, Australian-born star of TV's Nip/Tuck has been mentioned as a candidate for the role in the upcoming Casino Royale and, presumably, the next several entries in the 007 franchise. But as far as I can tell, just about every handsome, athletic English/New Zealand/Scottish/Welsh/Australian actor in the 30-40ish age range has been proposed for the part. The candidates have included Australians Hugh Jackman
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