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- <text id=92TT0318>
- <title>
- Feb. 10, 1992: View Points:Television
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Feb. 10, 1992 Japan
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 76
- TELEVISION
- Grievous Burden
- </hdr><body>
- <p> What's the difference between a feature film and a TV movie?
- For this week's lesson, compare the taut, engrossing 1990
- theatrical film adapted from Scott Turow's first novel, Presumed
- Innocent, with the flabby, enervated miniseries ABC has made
- from his second, THE BURDEN OF PROOF (Feb. 9-10, 9 p.m. EST).
- To be sure, this later novel--about a prominent defense
- attorney who uncovers a web of shady dealings and family secrets
- after his wife's suicide--is a more complex, less easily
- digested work. Still, it might have clicked if the convoluted
- plot had not sprawled over four padded hours. Or if the
- made-for-TV cast had been better. Hector Elizondo plays the
- defense attorney in one monotonous key: prissy naivete. Victoria
- Principal, Stefanie Powers and Mel Harris, randomly chosen from
- a bin marked EX-PRIME-TIME STARS LOOKING FOR WORK, leave no
- impression whatsoever as the women in his life. The Burden of
- Proof is darker and more nuanced than most TV movies, but that
- doesn't make sitting through it any easier to bear.
- </p>
- <p>By Richard Zoglin.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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