Little House On The Prairie
Saturday night ABC aired a special called ?Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie?, a 5-part series that will be shown every Saturday night for 5 weeks. <a href="http://abc.go.com/movies/littlehouse.html" target=_blank> Click here to read about it. </a> As some of you know, I am a big fan of the 1970s television series ?Little House on the Prairie?, a classic that stared the amazing Michael Landon as Charles Ingalls and Melissa Gilbert as Laura. The TV series was about as good as television gets with a mix of humor, drama, tragedy, sweeping outdoor scenes, great costume and set design and a heartwarming message to almost every episode. The TV series was followed by some fair TV movie episodes like ?Little House: The Last Farewell?.
The current TV mini-series, actually produced by Disney and which I would not have known about if not for a serendipitous call from a neighbor looking to borrow a video cassette to tape it, was actually really good. At least the first part. In 2000, an attempt at a Little House movie, called ?Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder? was a train wreck. First, it only focused on 4 books so it left the viewer feeling empty and unfinished. The casting was all wrong with Richard Thomas (The Waltons) playing Charles Ingalls, Walt Goggins (The Apostle) playing Almonzo and Meredith Monroe playing Laura. The show really focused on Laura as a married adult and Meredith Monroe, a stunning and beautiful actress, was as good of a fit playing Laura as I would be playing Eleanor Roosevelt. The movie was just off.
But this one is shaping up to be good. Charles is played by what I swear is Clint Eastwood turned back 40 years. Cameron Bancroft, who was in Beverly Hills 90210 for a while, is great as the father and husband. The young Ingalls girls are played well by whoever is playing them and the first episode, which focused on Charles? desire to move his family out of Wisconsin and the challenging trip to Kansas, was not all rainbows and butterflies. It showed the perils and risks of doing that trip. The wife is a little too put-together and organized, clean and happy, but I can look past that for now. They also introduced Mr. Edwards, always a good time.
I?ll let you know how the other 4 episodes are, I am ?TiVo-ing? them.
Just thought I?d share.