Skag

Skag
Genre	Drama
Created by	Abby Mann
Written by	William A. Attaway Hindi Brooks Abby Mann Marsha Norman
Directed by	Edward Parone Frank Perry Allen Reisner
Starring	Karl Malden Piper Laurie Craig Wasson Peter Gallagher Leslie Ackerman Kathryn Holcomb George Voskovec Powers Boothe Frank Campanella Shirley Stoler
Composer(s)	Bruce Broughton
Country of origin	USA
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	5 (+ Pilot television movie)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Abby Mann Lee Rich
Producer(s)	Douglas Benton Brad Dexter
Running time	60 mins. (approx)
Production company(s)	Lorimar Television
Release
Original network	NBC
Audio format	Monaural
Original release	January 6 – February 21, 1980

Skag is an American drama series that aired on NBC and starred Karl Malden. Skag originated as a three-hour television movie that aired on January 6, 1980 (as an installment of The Big Event). Over a week later, it then premiered as a weekly series, Thursdays at 10/9c, which ran from January 17, 1980, until its cancellation on February 21, 1980.

Skag focused on the life of a foreman at a Pittsburgh steel mill. Malden described his character, Pete Skagska, as a simple man trying to keep his family together. The series was created by Abby Mann, and executive produced by Mann and Lee Rich.

The opening three-hour movie pilot introduces viewers to 56-year-old Pete "Skag" Skagska (Malden), a hard-working steel mill foreman of Serbian-Orthodox ancestry, who dealt with a lot of fire in both his professional and personal lives. The dark lairs of welding, colossal machinery, and working-class ideals from the people he supervised was the only life Skag knew, until a series of events turned his world upside down. On the homefront, his devoted second wife Jo (Piper Laurie), 12 years his junior and the only Jewish member of the Skagska family, was at times growing distant from Pete; his two eldest sons, David (Craig Wasson) and John (Peter Gallagher) were also growing apart from him, but were feuding with him over their radically different ideals and their respective decisions in life; and most profoundly, his elderly father, Petar Sr. (George Voskovec), who also lived in the household, was suffering from the aftermath of a debilitating stroke. Skag's concern and mental anguish over these issues was about to reach its boiling point just as Skag suddenly suffered a stroke, as well, finding himself incapacitated, emotionally scarred, and unemployed for an untold period of time.

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