Top talent and some classic stories show up more often on cable
One of the advantages of being known as an edgy, innovative medium is that stars and other big-name talent want to come on board. Cable's lineup over the next several months shows no lack of well-known celebrities working both in front of and behind the camera.
On March 12, USA Network 
will premiere "Touching Evil," a new drama series with Bruce Willis and Arnold Rifkin as executive producers.
Mr. Willis has said he would like to play the villain in an episode of the series, which stars Jeffrey Donovan as a cop who survives a
bullet wound to his head and finds that although he's better at his work, his social behavior has changed.
USA Network also has Jamie-Lynn DiScala, who plays Meadow on HBO's "The Sopranos," starring in "Going Down: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss," about the legendary Hollywood madam. It premieres March 29.
TNT —which announced that Steven Spielberg will serve as
executive producer for a 12-episode drama, set to
premiere next year, about the opening of the American West—opened its slate of 2004 original movies with
Patricia Heaton and Jeff Daniels starring in an update of the Neil Simon classic "The Goodbye Girl." Two other
upcoming TNT original movies have stars headlining their casts. Matthew Modine and Kristin Davis star in the
baseball-themed "The Winning Season," debuting Feb. 16 at 9 p.m., Chris Noth served as exsecutive producer and
stars, along with Elliott Gould and Robert Patrick, in "The Bad Apple," about a pair of FBI agents trying to
break up a loan shark ring. It airs April 4.
Catherine Deneuve and Nastassja Kinski star in a modern adaptation of "Dangerous Liaisons," airing on
WE: Women's Entertainment in March.
In April, Patrick Swayze stars in a Hallmark Channel recreation of H. Rider Haggard's classic novel, "King Solomon's Mines." Michael York, Gérard Depardieu, Ms. Kinski and John Rhys-Davies star in Hallmark's original film, "Le Femme Musketeer," in which D'Artagnan's daughter rescues him and the other famous swordsmen from a mission gone bad. It premieres in May.
Not all of the stars appearing on cable this winter and spring are acting in or producing scripted programming. Non-fiction shows will have their share of celebrities as well.
Famous females will be much in evidence Feb. 17, when Lifetime airs "Until the Violence Stops," an hourlong special that accents the network's monthlong campaign to illuminate the problem of violence against women. Tantoo Cardinal, Rosario Dawson, Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Salma Hayek, Rosie Perez and Isabella Rossellini appear in the special, which traces the international impact of V-Day, a grassroots movement to combat violence against women, sparked by Ms. Ensler's play "The Vagina Monologues."
Renowned wildlife conservationist Jane Goodall appears in "Return to Gombe," an Animal Planet special about Ms. Goodall's efforts to fight a mysterious illness at the outpost where she began her research decades ago. It premieres March 8.
Keith Carradine hosts the History Channel's
"Wild West Tech," a new series, premiering in late March, about gadgets used on
the American frontier. And Merv Griffin serves as executive producer for "TV Land Moguls," a four-part documentary, debuting
April 21, about the writers and directors since the 1950s who shaped prime time. Each episode of the TV Land series looks at
a different period in TV's development, and considers the work of such greats as Sheldon Leonard, Danny Thomas, Norman Lear,
Grant Tinker, Stephen J. Cannell, Steven Bochco, David E. Kelley, Dick Wolf and Darren Star.
For several years, cable has been a magnet for actors, directors, writers and producers looking for more creative freedom than broadcast TV tends to permit. "I'm happy to see that USA and other [cable] networks are allowing the envelope to be pushed a little bit," Mr. Willis said at January's TV Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Los Angeles. Backing him up was Robert Palm, his co-executive producer on "Touching Evil." "For me the great freedom—this is my first time on cable—is to raise the bar of expectation on the audience's part," Mr. Palm said. The attitude, he explained, is that "[viewers] get it, they're smart. We can tell the story visually... and you don't need 'Irving the explainer' all the time.
"To me, that's the great freedom."
 |
 |
 |
