In Search of Maxi-Audiences

By Richard Zoglin

Ah, remember those exciting early days of the U.S. space program? Dieter Kolff and his fellow scientists leading America's effort to catch up with the Soviets and put a man into orbit. Astronaut John Pope making his spectacular walk in space. And, of course, that historic Apollo landing on the dark side of the moon and its terrifying brush with disaster . . .

You don't remember? Well, fear not for your sanity. The space program was real, but these people and events are part of the peculiar parallel world that Novelist James Michener constructed in his 1982 best seller Space and that is unfurling this week over five nights and 13 hours on CBS. Viewers are being beckoned onto the long Space flight after scarcely catching their breath from another extended TV voyage, NBC's twelve-hour tour of the early years of Christianity, A.D. Indeed, there has hardly been a respite all season from the parade of miniseries. Seven multipart dramas of three nights or more (as well as several two-parters) have been telecast since September; an eighth, CBS's Christopher Columbus, is coming in May.

Yet the days when a big network mini-series could mobilize the country around its TV sets night after night seem to have vanished. Though none of this season's mini-series were outright bombs, all fell short of smash ratings. Despite A.D.'s stars (James Mason, Ava Gardner), spectacle and heavy pretelecast promotion, it attracted only 19.2% of the nation's TV viewers. That is above average but no larger than the audience for a typical episode of Magnum, P.I. The most popular three-parter of the season, ABC's Hollywood Wives, drew an unspectacular 22.8 rating, much lower than the blockbuster numbers predicted for the glitzy tale of Tinseltown.

Just two years ago, by contrast, ABC's The Winds of War swept the nation with an average 38.6 rating over its seven nights. A month later, The Thorn Birds, also on ABC, surpassed that score with a whopping 41.9. Enticed by these colossal numbers, all three networks began developing mini-series at a rate unseen since the heady days following the ground-breaking 1977 telecast of Roots (at 45.0, still the all-time ratings champ). Such "long form" dramas, however, need out-of-the-ordinary ratings to justify their hefty production costs (a reported $32 million for Space, for example), especially since most of them do poorly in reruns. And as the minis proliferate, maxi- audiences are becoming harder to woo. "When mini-series first came in, they were a novelty," says Harvey Shephard, senior vice president of programming at CBS. "Now audiences have become more discriminating."

Bored might be a better word. As a genre, the big network mini-series has become as predictable and formulaic as the half-hour sitcom. This season's multiparters were mostly sprawling family dramas or historical sagas, with hackneyed plots spiced up with vaguely exotic locales (1920s Paris in Mistral's Daughter, turn-of-the-century New York City in Ellis Island). A.D.'s meticulous evocation of the ancient Roman Empire could not redeem a ponderous extravaganza that looked as if it had been conceived and directed by computer.

Space is a happy exception to the dismal rule. To be sure, this hodgepodge of history, adventure, science and soap opera is marred by some rickety subplots and boring domestic drama. The dialogue, by veteran Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, has more than its share of clinkers (Heinrich Himmler, taking a telephone call in the waning days of World War II: "Ja. Tell the Fuhrer I will be in the bunker with him by nightfall"). And too many scenes in the final few hours look like cheesy knockoffs of The Right Stuff as we follow the exploits of a group of astronauts dubbed the Solid Six, a sort of road-company version of the Mercury Seven.

But Space, with a stylish production and an exceptionally well-chosen cast, has plenty of its own right stuff. Bruce Dern gives one of his most appealing performances as an engineer who travels to Germany to rescue the Nazis' rocket experts near the end of World War II and later becomes a top official at NASA. James Garner is ingratiating (as usual) and energetic (not so usual) as a former war hero who becomes a U.S. Senator. Directors Joseph Sargent and Lee Philips have given the series more visual texture than is usual on the small screen, and a good selection of newsreel footage and pop music evokes the changing eras with panache.

Space may not be a giant leap for TV, but it is at least a small step for this season's mini-series. The question is whether it is a step toward a dead end. Network executives mostly say no. "If there was a feeling the mini- series were on their way out," says Christy Welker, vice president of novels and limited series for ABC, "that would show up in the networks' pace of buying and developing them." Instead, next season's schedule is quickly filling up with such multiparters as ABC's North and South, a ten-hour Civil War saga; NBC's Peter the Great, a ten-hour biography of the Russian Czar; and CBS's Kane and Abel, based on Jeffrey Archer's best-selling novel. In other words, whether Space soars or crashes, TV's endurance flights are not about to be scrubbed.

With reporting by Denise Worrell/Los Angeles