Title: Tales of the City
Release Dates: 1993
Season: 1
Number of Episodes: 6
Summary/Review:
After watching the new Tales of the City miniseries on Netflix, I saw that this original miniseries is also on Netflix and had to rewatch. As good as the new series is, this original is really a masterpiece of television. There’s a lot about it I love – the dialogue, the pacing, the way San Francisco is incorporated as a character, the camerawork (I especially enjoy how many scenes are shot through windows), and the music, both the period-specific pop tunes and the original score for the series. The new series, and well, a lot of television misses these deft touches.
I also like how it slowly reveals that in a city where no one seems to have any secrets that everyone has deep secrets indeed. I like how well they handled a romance between an older couple – Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis) and Edgar Halcyon (Donald Moffat) – something you rarely see depicted on film. Marcus D’Amico is really the most heartwarming perfomer as Michael Tolliver, and I really loved his strong friendship with Mona Ramsey (Chloe Webb). That Michael in the new series doesn’t share any memories of Mona and even changes the story of how he met Mrs. Madrigal is all the more disappointing.
Even though I haven’t watched this in at least 20 years, I was surprised how well I remembered so many scenes. The big exception is that I forgot the whole thing about D’orothea (Cynda Williams) pretending to be Black and Mona trying to appeal to her with sould food, which is one of the big misteps of this whole series and worth forgetting about. Otherwise this is a terrific show and if you have Netflix give yourself a treat and watch it.
Panorama of the Mountains 