Lonesome Dove is a Western television miniseries based on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones, Lonesome Dove was originally broadcast by CBS on February 5, 1989, drawing a huge viewing audience, earning numerous awards, and reviving both the television western and the miniseries.
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Reviews
Good concept, poorly executed.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
I own the entire Lonesome Dove Saga, I own the books, and I've read and watched them many times. This one though, the original mini series, was what got me into it though. I love a great western, and I love a great western done well, and this one was done very well. An incredible all star cast, and just a great show to watch. I recommend buying the whole saga and watching it in order though to get the whole story line. Read the books too to get more out of it. If you have a whole weekend to kill, I'd definitely recommend sitting down and watching this, it's well worth it.
American Crime (2015 ) is a first-rate series out of ABC, somewhat surprisingly, since its characters are more complex than we usually expect from the major networks. Like one reviewer observed, it seems much more like an HBO or some other cable original. My wife Nini and I loved the first two seasons, with different story lines each season. To our delight, we just read a report that there is going to be a third season.What I most like about the series is the way its characters are both smart and obtuse just like the rest of us. They are not stupid, as in, "How could anyone who's supposed to be that smart be so stupid?!" In American Crime, people misunderstand one another just as they do in real life: not from being stupid, but from not being sophisticated enough or just plain patient enough to consider all the angles in a complex interaction. American Crime is drama, and definitely not didactic. Yet it could effectively supplement an academic class on how people interact when under pressure in an unfamiliar situation.The mind does not naturally associate American Crime with another TV series, Lonesome Dove (1989). Yet a friend stimulated me to compare the two when he complained that the latter lacked a plot. In recognizing that he was right, and wondering why I had not experienced that as a lack, I realized that there is no plot in life. We do not usually die at the culmination of a project whose end coincides with our death and which gives complete meaning to our life. Admittedly, there is a narrative involved in driving cattle to Wyoming; but that just organizes the evolution of personalities who may or may not survive the movie. We become emotionally involved with them not primarily through any plot, but through who they are and how they relate to one another. Just like life. There may be various projects in our life, but not an overall, guiding plot. The same for Lonesome Dove. That is why Woodrow Call's (Tommy Lee Jones) taking Gus' (Robert Duvall) body back to Texas wasn't anti-climactic, which it would have been if the central engine of the movie had been a plot about their herding horses to Wyoming. The return of Gus' body was so exceptionally moving just because it was carrying forward something much more emotionally involving than a plot: the keeping of a promise to a life-long friend by a man who was left behind and facing the decline of his life.American Crime is not involving in that way, but depends more on plot. Its characters' mix of smart and obtuse is not so much emotionally involving as interesting, if you happen to notice it while following the action. But by showing the complexity of human interactions, and in a way that does not drown us in complexity by being explicit about it, it is an exceptional account of how we interact with one another.
I love Westerns. The best ones (Naked Spur, The Searchers, Ride the High Country, Shane, etc.) told gritty tales of struggle and hardship, of man at war with nature, evil and himself. They are not alabaster saints, they are real people struggling with real temptation and real failures, but in the end they are redemption stories of people making amends and saving others from their mistakes.In "Lonesome Dove", however, the message is different: Life Stinks and Then You Die.8 hours of talk, talk, talk with no point but vanity and stupidity will get you killed. If that's news to anyone, just surf the internet for five minutes, it'll save you wasting a lot of time.
This is the best that TV can possibly be. I would put it a notch above the other two contenders, "The Honeymooners," and the remarkable HBO series, "The Wire." The acting is superb, the story is a great one, and the cast is phenomenal. This is on my short list of a dozen or so things I watch once a year. The greatest. I am adding to this now because they require ten lines of text, so this is all addendum, but the list of outstanding character actors in this miniseries superb. Angelica Huston is great in the role of Gus' ex love, a warm and giving human being with some fire in her heart and tongue. Chris Cooper, is always outstanding in any role. Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duval are perfect.