Live From Death Row

By Richard Zoglin

How misguided has the campaign against TV violence become? Imagine you are NBC, and you've mustered the gumption to do a TV movie that explores the issue of media violence. The plot concerns a pay-per-view TV network of the future that, in its desperation for viewers, decides to televise the execution of a convicted killer. The drama is a fierce indictment of TV's tabloid excesses and features as cynical a portrait of unscrupulous television executives as any movie since Network.

And here's what you get for your trouble. The movie is attacked as "snuff TV" by the national trade paper Advertising Age; NBC is lambasted for contributing to the problem of TV violence; the show is even denounced sight unseen by a U.S. Senator (Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota). It's enough to drive a programmer back to Saved by the Bell: The College Years.

Witness to the Execution (airing Sunday, Feb. 13) is not flawless, but it is a shrewd and timely examination of TV sensationalism, which is not the same thing as being sensational. Jessica Traynor (Sean Young), the top program executive for Tycom Entertainment, a pay-per-view operation "somewhere in a 500-channel television universe," is searching for a blockbuster programming event. "We're in trouble, Jess," says her boss (Len Cariou). "Movies don't work; screen's still too small. Sports is dying. The sex boom is over. Where the hell are we going?"

Where they're going, on Jessica's suggestion, is death -- live. She pays a visit to the state prison's death row and persuades Dennis Casterline (Tim Daly), a convicted murderer and rapist, to permit live TV to witness his execution; in return, his four-year-old daughter will receive a share of revenues from the event. The network sets up the electric chair in an arena dubbed the Megadome, launches a huge publicity campaign and goes about converting this most grisly of affairs into prime-time entertainment. "The doctor wants to know how close you want to be," someone asks Jessica as the camera shots are set up for the extravaganza. "Dennis' ears might start to smoke." She thinks only a moment: "Tell him to keep it wide."

In the age of Lorena Bobbitt and Geraldo Rivera, this is farfetched by only a smidgen. (Who can be certain, in fact, that Geraldo hasn't already done it?) The film takes place in the year 1999, when the crime problem has ratchetted up a few notches. Driving home from work, Jessica sees random fights on the streets, and when she enters a bar, a computerized sensor announces, "Weapons clear." Despite a few lapses in logic -- even for a man whose appeals are exhausted, how can an execution be scheduled this precisely? -- the film, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Stephen King's "It") from a script by Thomas Baum (The Manhattan Project), unfolds with caustic plausibility, from the outbreak of T-shirt merchandisers to the anti-capital-punishment protesters who picket the event.

Unfortunately, the film takes a wrong turn halfway through. The man slated to die for the cameras insists that he's innocent, and Jessica starts doing a little detective work. The movie at this point shifts from cautionary satire to routine whodunit, and the basic moral issue is made simplistic. The question becomes not the ethics of televising an execution but the ethics of televising the execution of someone who may not be guilty. Even the kids in Saved by the Bell know the answer to that one. -- R.Z.