Val Lehman Movies

Based on a novel by Dennis Danvers, the three-part British miniseries Wilderness asks the question "Can a nice Quaker girl find happiness as a sometimes-werewolf?" At the beginning of each lunar cycle, heroine Alice White (Amanda Ooms) transforms into a wolf -- or at least that is her story. Unable to convince her sweetheart that she suffers from lycanthropy, Alice turns to a psychiatrist who, instead of helping her, draws up plans to exploit her "complex" for his own professional advancement. Despairing, Alice heads to a Scottish wildlife retreat, where the story reaches its startling conclusion. Since its original TV run in 1996, Wilderness has been released to video in a shortened "feature film" version. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The inspirational autobiogry of A.B. Facey was the source for the four-part Austalian miniseries A Fortunate Life. Spanning the years from 1897 to 1916, the story began when eight-year-old Bert Facey, abandoned by his widowed mother, was forced to work on a farm run by sadistic horse thieves. After several years of backbreaking manual labor, Bert was given a break when he went to live on the farm owned by the Philips family. Conscripted into the Army at the outbreak of WWII, the hero managed to survive the carnage at Gallipoli, and after additional hardships and setbacks, enjoyed a happily-ever-after as the husband of the beautiful Evelyn, a union that would endure for six decades. Facey's book was published in 1981, one year before his death at age 77. The TV version of A Fortunate Life was telecast by Australia's Nine Network in 1985. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi