THE MOVIES: "THE EIGHTIES"
CNN, 9:00 p.m. ET
DOCUMENTARY MINISERIES PREMIERE: Last night, CNN repeated all the TV-related episodes of its popular series of Decades documentaries – using them not only as filler for the holiday weekend, but also to consistently and constantly promote this new series from the same producers at Tom Hanks’ production company. This one is devoted to The Movies, with a different decade each installment, beginning tonight with “The Eighties.” That was a good decade for Hanks in the movies – but really, what decade hasn’t been since he made his first Big Splash on the big screen? (See what I did there? Big?Splash?) And Hanks was great, and fair and quotable, in all the TV-related episodes, as when he described the wide-eyed childhood thrill of seeing Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on a color TV set. Oh, and one other notable difference between the TV-related programs for CNN and these new cinematic counterparts: I’m not in these movie ones, while I did appear in all the TV episodes. I therefore recommend The Movies even more highly… For a review, see Mike Hughes' Open Mike.