Monday Mornings

Courtroom drama series Raising the Bar focuses on a group of young lawyers who are friends by night and enemies by day. Some of these law men and women work for the public defender's office, and others work for the district attorney, putting them at odds with each other in the courtroom - and sometimes in the living room as well. Each side of this clique represents a vital part of the legal system, but that system isn't prepared for the complications brought by flawed human relationships, and they soon find that both personal and professional relationships have to be decided on a case by case basis.

Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, the sprawling six-part, 12-hour TV miniseries Into the West covers 65 years of American history, from the first major migration westward in the mid-1820s to the massacre at Wounded Knee in the early 1890s. The story is largely seen through the eyes of two protagonists (and their families): Jacob Wheeler (Matthew Settle), a wheelwright who leaves his Virginia hometown and his family's business in 1827 to seek his destiny in the company of legendary mountain man Jedediah Smith (Josh Brolin); and Loved by the Buffalo (George Leach), a Lakota Sioux holy man who spends a lifetime seeking the answers to his profound and disturbing images about the future of his country -- and his people. Eschewing the usual "old-age makeup" route often pursued in epic tales of this nature, the main characters are played by progressively older actors in the course of the story: for example, Loved by the Buffalo is portrayed by no fewer than four different performers! In a more traditionalist How the West Was Won vein, the miniseries is festooned with major stars, some cast in very brief roles: among these are Josh Brolin, Keri Russell, Matthew Modine, Beau Bridges, Gary Busey, Tom Berenger, and Judge Reinhold. Nor is How the West Was Won the only inspiration for the multi-plotted storyline: other films echoed and emulated throughout the saga include The Iron Horse, The Big Trail, Westward the Women, The Searchers, and Dances With Wolves. As mentioned, the story is divided into six parts: "Wheel to the Stars," in which the fates of Jacob Wheeler and Loved by the Buffalo become forever intertwined; "Manifest Destiny," chronicling the first major trek to California; "Dreams & Schemes," wherein the Lakota lands are despoiled by Gold Fever and war breaks out between the North and South; "Hell on Wheels," chronicling the postwar chaos and the coming of the railroad; "Casualties of War," wherein the conflict between Native Americans and the white man results in wholesale bloodshed -- and, surprisingly, a "counter-revolution" of compassion and understanding; and "Ghost Dance," the last great stand of the Lakota, which brings the story full circle. Largely filmed in the Canadian Rockies over a six-month period, and utilizing the talents of six directors, Into the West premiered June 10, 2005, on the TNT cable network.

A gritty, stylized drama about a flawed but boyishly charming paramedic in Portland, Ore., who tries to cope with a gambling addiction, the stinging stress of his job, a demanding surgeon father and romantic complications involving his ex-girlfriend, an emergency-room physician.

Chris O'Donnell, Michael Keaton, and Alfred Molina star in this television mini-series event adapted from the book by Robert Littell and brought to the screen by cinematographer-turned-director Mikael Salomon (Salem's Lot and Benedict Arnold: A Question of Honor). An epic thriller that traces the timeline of the CIA from the Berlin Base of the 1950s through to the Gorbachev putsch, The Company details the struggles of agents caught between double lives, that war waged against an enemy as immoral as it is elusive, and the internal battles that threatened to destroy "The Company" from the inside out.

Young travelers embark on a three-month trip around Asia in this comedy-drama.