MONDAY VIEWING
The 1977 bestselling novel Coma reads like a Michael Crichton book, but it was actually written by Robin Cook, a New York physician and novelist who earned a well-deserved reputation for eerie, prescient thrillers that predicted many medical controversies.
Crichton did, however, write and direct the wildly successful 1978 film adaptation, starring a young Genevieve Bujold as a surgical resident at a Boston hospital who becomes suspicious after her friend lapses into a coma and is pronounced brain-dead after a seemingly simple procedure goes wrong.
Crichton, also a medical doctor, brought an insider's touch to Cook's realistic tale.
What's remarkable is how well Cook's premise in Coma holds up today. That's the reason the story is retold tonight, in a bigbudget, two-night, fourhour miniseries produced by filmmaker brothers Ridley Scott and the late Tony Scott, with a cast that includes Lauren Ambrose (in the Bujold role), Geena Davis, James Woods, Ellen Burstyn and Richard Dreyfuss.
Much has changed in film and on TV since 1978, and the new Coma is sleeker, shinier and sexier, though purists will still prefer the Crichton version.
Ambrose is not a star, just a terrific actor doing a yeoman actor's job, with the real stars shrewdly cast in supporting roles. Bujold, originally from Montreal, went into Coma on the heels of her Oscar nominated performance as Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days, but she was always an actor first, and a movie star second.
Cook wasn't just a trashy novelist writing potboilers.
His books were prompted in part to keep the public informed of medical breakthroughs, and their moral and societal implications.
The secret in Coma isn't just a good yarn. It could happen. Concludes Tuesday.
6 p.m., A&E
Three to see
- The lightweight legal drama Franklin & Bash returns for a second season of cutie-pie subplots - the season opener revolves in part around a custody dispute over a pooch.
6 p.m., Bravo
- Hotel Hell features backto-back episodes. In the first, Gordon Ramsay checks into the River Rock Inn in Milford, Pennsylvania, and is confronted by so many dead bugs it feels like a Kafka nightmare. Then it's off to The Roosevelt Inn in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a B&B where the owner would rather dress up like Sherlock Holmes and entertain the guests during "Murder Mystery Nights" than do something about the hotel's mouldy look.
8 p.m., Global, Fox
- Hawaii Five-0 dials up a repeat from October in which Nightmare on Elm Street baddie Robert Englund plays a drifter who puts a curse on a young couple filming at a traditional Hawaiian burial site.
10 p.m., CBS
