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PATERNO
April 7, 2018  | By David Bianculli

HBO, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

Al Pacino is back on HBO, and back with Barry Levinson as director, for a docudrama about two very tumultuous weeks in the life of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. The drama centers on the widespread controversy about Paterno assistant Jerry Sandusky, charged with dozens of accounts of child molestation and rape over a lengthy period. Pacino is subtle and excellent, and the story is structured to avoid showing much of Sandusky at all, much less any of his alleged criminal behavior. This made-for-TV movie garnered a lot of attention, naturally, here at TVWW. You can hear and read my review on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross at the Fresh Air website. And for full reviews here on TVWW, see David Hinckley’s All Along the Watchtower, Ed Bark’s Uncle Barky’s Bytes, and an interview with Pacino and Levinson in Roger Caitlin’s TV Eye.

 
 
 
 
 
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