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- VIDEO, Page 90BEST OF '88
-
-
- BABY M (ABC) With an intelligent script, restrained direction
- and riveting performances by JoBeth Williams and John Shea, this
- docudrama about surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead became a stark
- thirtysomething nightmare.
-
- DEAF AND BLIND (PBS) Cinema verite specialist Frederick Wiseman
- took his cameras to the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind and
- came back with four enlightening, often heartrending documentaries.
-
- HOLLYWOOD: THE GOLDEN YEARS (Arts & Entertainment) RKO, the
- studio where King Kong, Fred Astaire and Orson Welles once roamed,
- was celebrated in six beautifully crafted, impressively researched
- episodes. Imported from the BBC, alas.
-
- KENNEDY RETROSPECTIVES Twenty-five years after J.F.K.'s
- assassination, specials on CBS, PBS and elsewhere reminded us
- movingly -- if excessively -- of the days when Presidents, and
- television, could be heroes.
-
- LIP SERVICE (HBO) An old-school TV anchorman (Paul Dooley)
- finds himself teamed with a shallow New Wave co-host (Griffin
- Dunne). Howard Korder's script for this made-for-cable movie neatly
- skewered television, but also located the tragedy beneath the
- tackiness.
-
- TANNER '88 (HBO) While voters slogged through an uninspired
- presidential campaign, Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau invented
- their own candidate (Michael Murphy) and fashioned, in this
- eleven-part series, the year's definitive satire of media politics.
-
- THE TENTH MAN (CBS) A rich lawyer imprisoned by the Nazis in
- Paris bargains to save his life and later faces the consequences.
- Anthony Hopkins made the viewer feel every moral pang in Graham
- Greene's engrossing story.
-
- VOICES & VISIONS (PBS) TV and poetry usually do not mix. But
- in this series of 13 thoughtful and evocative essays on American
- versifiers, the alchemy was just right.
-
- WISEGUY (CBS) Ken Wahl is Vinnie Terranova, an undercover cop
- sniffing out Mob bad guys, in TV's roughest, toughest, most
- flamboyantly entertaining crime series.
-
- THE WONDER YEARS (ABC) The nostalgia is ladled on a bit thick,
- but this wry, affectionate comedy about a twelve-year-old's angst
- in the late '60s has wit and insight -- and the most believable
- family scenes on TV.