Tales of the City (miniseries)
| Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City | |
|---|---|
DVD cover
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| Genre | Drama |
| Based on |
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin |
| Screenplay by | Richard Kramer |
| Directed by |
Alastair Reid (Tales...) Pierre Gang (More... and Further...) |
| Starring |
Olympia Dukakis Donald Moffat Chloe Webb Laura Linney William Campbell Paul Gross Marcus D'Amico Thomas Gibson Barbara Garrick Nina Foch Stanley DeSantis |
| Theme music composer | John Keane |
| Country of origin | UK / US |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) |
Antony Root Alan Poul |
| Cinematography | Walt Lloyd |
| Editor(s) | David Gamble |
| Running time | 360 mins. |
| Production company(s) |
Working Title Films/ Propaganda Films for Channel 4 |
| Distributor | Channel 4 |
| Release | |
| Original network | Channel 4 |
| Original release |
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| Chronology | |
| Followed by |
More Tales of the City (1998) |
Tales of the City is a 1993 television miniseries based on the first of the Tales of the City series of novels by Armistead Maupin.
To date, the first three books have been adapted into television miniseries; the first, Tales of the City, was produced by the UK's Channel 4 and was first screened in the UK in 1993, then shown on PBS in the US in January 1994. Channel 4 eventually teamed up with the American cable network Showtime to produce the sequel, More Tales of the City, which premiered in the US and UK in 1998. The third instalment of the series, Further Tales of the City was produced by Showtime (without Channel 4) and was originally aired in the US on Showtime in May 2001.
In June, 2016, Laura Linney was asked whether she would make another Tales series if she were asked, to which she answered yes and then revealed that talks were in progress about a new series of Tales of the City set in modern day San Francisco. Armistead Maupin himself then revealed that meetings had already taken place and both Linney and Olympia Dukakis were attached.
Premium cable channel HBO acquired the rights to the first two Tales of the City books in 1982 in the hopes of turning them into a weekly sitcom. Pre-production began in the fall of that year with a pilot script by Richard Kramer. Kramer described the script as a "Mary Tyler Moore for the '80s". In the face of the rising AIDS epidemic and a changing social climate in the conservative Reagan era, HBO reportedly felt that the book's celebratory attitude toward homosexuality, casual sex and marijuana usage would not be deemed acceptable by the viewing public. The channel considered toning down the stories and making the series a period piece but ultimately decided to scrap the project.
The series was later revived for PBS, which aired it in 1993. However, its airing of the series was controversial, with political figures criticizing the network for airing an LGBT-oriented series, and the network backed out of producing or airing any followup installments.
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