ABSTRACT
Since its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, the made-for-television movie has become as much punchline as television form. For years, scholars and audiences alike have disparaged the outrageous, “ripped from the headlines,” melodramatic stories the form relied upon in the 1980s and 1990s. Titles such as Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?, A Face to Kill For, and even A Face to Die For have become the source of countless jokes, and cable theme nights such as Lifetime’s “Killer Babysitter Evening” highlight the campy nature of the form. Nonetheless, there can be no mistaking the historical importance of the made-for-TV movie within the television industry; the form was once a central narrative form for television storytelling. Indeed, in his book Inside Prime Time, Todd Gitlin notes that “The three networks now underwrite more original movies than all the studios combined” and that the films composed a full 25 percent of prime-time programming slots at the time.1
