A Tale of Two Cities

This CBS TV movie reworking of the Dickens novel certainly has an epic feeling to it and a running time to match. The author's tale of the French Revolution is one of his most dramatic and tragic and certainly this hits the right marks at times, with a real intensity in some of the scenes set in Paris. The cast is obviously wide-ranging and offers a good mix of seasoned old-timers (like Peter Cushing) and fresh new faces, including Chris Sarandon and Alice Krige. It gets a bit plodding during the middle section but there are always performances like Billie Whitelaw's to enjoy, and the ending certainly ties it off nicely.