Alex Hyde-White Movies

Five Emmy nominations went to the two-part TV drama The First Olympics: Athens 1896. The story begins in 1894, when Baron Pierre de Courbetin (Louis Jourdan) announces his intention to stage the first Olympic games of the Modern Era within two years in Athens. The baron heads to the US to recruit an athletic team. Despite disinterest, opposition and spotty funding, de Courbetin assembles his team with the help of Princeton professor William Sloane. The thirteen chosen Americans have a pretty bumpy time of it, but most survive to the final Olympic contest: the grueling Marathon. The supporting cast is top-heavy with veterans from both America and England, including Angela Lansbury, Honor Blackman, Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. Among the leading players is future NYPD Blue star David Caruso as Irish-American athlete James Connolly. Originally running five hours, The First Olympics was first telecast May 20 and 21, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An episode of the television series, with Buck, Wilma, Hawk, and the crew plunged into strange surroundings because of a mysterious green box. ~ Rovi

The story of Paul Gaugin (1848-1903), the Parisian stockbroker who left his job, his wife and his five children for the life of an artist in Tahiti, was superbly fictionalized in Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence. Gaugin the Savage is the same story with no names changed, told in two wearisome hours. David Carradine is the right age for Gaugin, and certainly does well in conveying the man's callous self-absorption. But we never quite see the inner fire that would compel a man to totally kick over the traces at age 35 and devote the remaining 20 years of his life to art and debauchery. This made-for-TV movie is at its best when showcasing Gaugin's fiercely brilliant paintings. Otherwise, Gaugin the Savage is as shallow as its advertising campaign, which showed a goateed David Carradine standing in the middle of Tahitian garden with both fists clenched--more closely resembling a disgruntled magician rather than a brilliant artist. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Seekers was the third and last TV movie based on John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles (the others were The Bastard and The Rebels). Heading the huge all-star cast is Randolph Mantooth as Abraham Kent, son of elderly Revolutionary War vet Andrew Kent (played by Martin Milner, replacing the first two films' Andrew Stevens), who has resettled in the treacherous Northwest Territory. Part One of this two-part, four-hour production finds young Abraham trying out a series of occupations, while his brother Gilbert (George Deloy) goes into his father's publishing business. Part Two takes us up to the War of 1812, as seen through the eyes of Jarod and Amanda Kent (Timothy P. Murphy and Sarah Rush), who shortly thereafter head westward. Originally syndicated as part of the Operation Prime Time package, The Seekers made its debut during the week of December 2, 1979. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Television film featuring the Marvel Comics hero doing battle with a mad industrialist who wields a neutron bomb. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi

Quincy, M.E.'s fourth season begins several hundred miles away from Los Angeles, home turf for feisty medical examiner Quincy (Jack Klugman). After he and his girlfriend Barbara (Sharon Acker) are nearly run off the road in a very minor car accident, Quincy discovers that the driver, a woman, is dead. Since the accident was hardly fatal, Quincy does a quick examination and learns to his horror that the woman's body is infected with a fatal toxin which has already killed two others--and may very well cause the death of Quincy's assistant Sam Fujiyama (Robert Ito). The series' real-life technical advisor Marc Scott Taylor) makes the first of several acting appearances in this episode as the temporary subsitute for the stricken Sam in this episode. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi