Posted on 05/29/2012 2:27:36 PM PDT by Bratch
The most spectacular success of the summer season on television may have come before summer has even started: the miniseries “Hatfields & McCoys” on the History Channel attracted a monster audience Monday night, 13.9 million viewers, the second largest for a cable program that did not involve sports.
By comparison, the finale this month of NBC’s singing competition hit, “The Voice,” attracted 10.5 million viewers. Most hit shows on cable are in the range of two million to four million viewers, though “The Walking Dead” on AMC reached what seemed then to be an impressive nine million for its finale in March.
But that did not come close to the total Monday night for the History Channel’s depiction of the legendary American family feud, which stars Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton. The viewership even dwarfed the biggest competition on the broadcast networks on Monday, NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” which brought in just over 10 million viewers.
(Excerpt) Read more at mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com ...
For those interested, it will be re-played tonight at 7pm EDT just prior to Part 2, which comes on at 9pm EDT.
I am eagerly awaiting part 2.
Costner *and* Paxton in one series? Sounds epic...
I meant to watch it then forgot about it.
I am no fan of Kevin Costner tho he is a good actor.
I know you said you liked it but how would you rate it critically?
No telling how many millions were spent to hype the thing.
I’m probably not one to ask about criticism.
Since I live in Kentucky, I’m naturally biased in favor of the production.
The one thing I will say....it is unceasingly grim. Hardly any humor.
Okay, FR tell me it's just me but I bet others will chime in in agreement.
HEY H&Mc, MODIFY YOUR AUDIO SO WE CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT'S BEING SAID!
Costner a good actor? He sucked in ‘Dances with Wolves’. I guess if someone is given the chance to do something often enough they will eventually get better at it. How he got his first role I’ll never understand. Is he a trust fund baby?
One of my best friends is a Kentucky Hatfield. I haven’t seen him in many years but he was an usher at our wedding. We drove a long way to attend his wedding.
His first role didn’t involve much acting. He was the dead guy in the Big Chill.
I have relatives that live in Kentucky near the West Virginia border so when they showed the Tug River Valley, I knew where it was. I swam in the Tug River before.
In front of the courthouse in Inez Kentucky they have several markers about the famous people in the history of the area Pioneers, politicians, etc). One of the famous names was a McCoy. There are plenty of Hatfields and McCoys in their phonebooks too.
Don’t get me started with “Dances With Wolves”. One of the most idiotic movies I have ever seen. One of the few I could not sit through.
As long as the character he plays is perplexed and concerned Costner is great. Like in Open Range when his character had no idea what was going on but knew it would bother him. He’s got that one expression for his face. And his face got stuck like that before Botox.
I would say that it was fairly close to what I’d read of the whole situation, and it would something that I’d recommend for a 10th grade civics class. You get a pretty good understanding of how a group of people allow some minor events to go out of control, where level heads could have stepped in....but never did, and the authorities ended up being of zero value.
As for the History Channel doing productions like this in the future....I’m all for it. And I can name off three possible productions (Lewis & Clark’s expedition, the early 1800’s rendezvous episode in Colorado, and the Battle of New Orleans).
The History Channel has had a program on the Battle of New Orleans. I think it was pretty decent on history tho I could not get used to their having a fairly fat guy portraying “Old Hickory”.
It was nothing like a mini series tho.
Costner may not be your cup of tea, but “Bull Durham” is the single best baseball movie ever.
All of his baseball movies were exceptional.
Filmed in.................Romania.
Bill Paxton probably has been in a ton of high grossing movies: True Lies, Aliens, Twister, Weird Science, on and on.
Still-—and I didn’t see this but would like to-—I am extremely skeptical about these numbers.
I’d rather watch ‘Lonesome Dove’ again with Robert DuVall. Now THERE’S a great actor although he chooses lame roles sometimes. When it comes to ‘easy to sit through’, ‘Shane’ comes to mind.
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