Penny Dreadful

The world of high finance is explored by tracking the approaching collision between a savvy U.S. Attorney and a leading hedge-fund manager. Axe a.k.a. Bobby Axelrod, a hedge fund manager, battles with Chuck Roads, a ruthless US attorney, in a war of outdoing each other in the highly aggressive financial market. Watch all their moves and how they carry out their plans meticulously as they collide.

Debuting December 4, 2005 on the Showtime network, the weekly, hour-long drama Sleeper Cell was at base an I Led Three Lives for the post-9/11 era, albeit with a bit more depth in, and understanding of, the villainous characters. In the opening episode, a disgruntled Muslim ex-convict named Darwyn Al-Sayeed (Michal Ealy) was recruited into a terrorist sleeper cell based in Los Angeles and headed by the fanatical Faris Al-Farik (Oded Eher). In order to best follow out his plans of sabotage and destruction in the US, Al-Farik posed as a Jewish-American named Yossi, who ironically worked for a security company. Similarly, the other members of the cell held down legitimate jobs while carrying out their dirty work--and, as if to put the lie to the assumption that terrorism has but one face, the others were drawn from a variety of ethnic and social backgrounds. Blue-eyed, blonde-haired All-American boy Tommy Emerson (Blake Shields) was the privileged son of liberal activists; Frenchman Christian Aumont (Alex Nesic), a former Skinhead and National Front member, led an outwardly respectable life as a suburban husband and father; and Al-Farik's Bosnian right-hand man Ilija (Henri Lubatti),who had witnessed the slaughter of his family by Orthodox Serbs, hid his terrorist activites behind the façade of a high-school science teacher. What none of the cell members realized was that Darwyn Al-Sayeed was likewise a "poser": He was actually an undercover FBI agent, assigned to infiltrate Al-Farik's cell and covertly thwart his various sinister schemes against national security. Only his FBI supervisor Rayl Fuller (James Legros) was aware of Darwyn's dual identity; others, including Darwyn's single-mom sweetheart Gayle Bishop (Melissa Sagemiller), had no idea of his actual mission. In keeping with pay-cable tradition, Sleeper Cell was infinitely more profane and violent than standard over-the-air action fare. And in many ways, the series was also infinitely superior to its non-pay cable competition.

A civil rights-themed series focusing on Muhammad Ali's refusal to enter the military over objections to the war in Vietnam.

First filmed theatrically in 1962, F. Scott Fitzgerald's final novel, Tender Is the Night, was given a lavish (seven million dollars) treatment in this British-Australian-American miniseries version. Set in Europe's waning days of the Roaring Twenties, the plot focused upon the tempestuous marriage between jaded psychiatrist Dick Diver (Peter Strauss) and the beautiful, schizophrenic socialite Nicole Warren (Mary Steenburgen). An international cast did an excellent job impersonating the "Lost Generation" for which Fitzgerald was the principal spokesman (the author was himself all but burned out by the time the original novel was published, and his desperation oozes through every page). The script, by the iconoclastic Dennis Potter (Pennies From Heaven, The Singing Detective), was based upon the 1951 "chronologically re-edited" version of the novel prepared by Malcolm Cowley. First broadcast by Britain's BBC2 in six 55-minute installments from September 23 to October 28, 1985, Tender Is the Night subsequently aired in a five-part version (albeit unedited) over America's Showtime network from October 27 to November 26, 1985.

Security cameras capture stories in this series.

Produced in Canada for a Canadian and U.S. viewership, the weekly, hour-long drama series Fast Track starred Keith Carradine as Richard Beckett. A former racecar driver, Beckett had become a doctor, working almost exclusively along the speedway circuit and tending to the injuries of his fellow motorists. Naturally, Beckett also got involved with various domestic crises, and occasionally put in time as an amateur detective. The impressive supporting cast included Duncan Regehr as Christian Chandler Jr., Tristan Rogers as Harry, Fred Williamson as Lowell Carter, and Sebastian Spence as Stevie Servine. Produced by Alliance Atlantis, Fast Track unveiled the first of its 23 episodes on August 3, 1997, telecast simultaneously on Canadian and American cable TV.