When a Small Screen Was the Biggest Thing

SET in a bustling Manhattan of 1948, the new TNT movie “The Big Time” recreates the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants excitement and experimentation of the early days of television. Both the Emmy Award-winning writer and director of the drama, which premieres Sunday on the cable network, admit they would have loved to have worked in the medium back then.

“What I discovered when I was doing my research is that many of the same elements that are in television today were present from the beginning,” says writer and executive producer Carol Flint. “Like the conflict between art and commerce and the social ills that America still faces. It was surprising to find so much of it at the beginning.”

But 1948 and 2002 aren’t entirely similar, and Flint says she was also intrigued by the differences. “It was so overtly optimistic and gung-ho,” she says. “It didn’t mean that there wasn’t racial tension or the blacklist looming, but people were friendly and pitching in. People were celebrating America’s role in World War II, and they were happy to be getting back to their lives. I feel the same elements are there today in kind of a reverse order. Cynicism is so dominating.”

Director and co-executive producer Paris Barclay, who, like Flint, has worked with “Big Time’s” executive producer John Wells, always had affection for early television, especially the live dramatic series that presented abridged adaptations of classic theater. “When I graduated from Harvard, one of my first jobs was working for the Museum of Television & Radio, and my project was ‘Studio One.’ I was putting together all the research for ‘Studio One.’ They would do live dramas, and I am watching these tapes and thinking this is really wonderful. If you come from theater, which I do, it is such a fantastic crossbreeding of television and theater. Before they knew what television would ever be, they decided, let’s put theater on television.”

The late John Frankenheimer, who began his directing career in live television, was a close friend of Barclay’s. “I would have just about done anything to have a career like his. He always talked about how exciting it was. He said it was like flying a plane.”

Flint had a personal connection to “The Big Time” era. “I wasn’t born in 1948; I wasn’t even conceived in 1948, but soon after that. There was this personal curiosity about delving into that time period right before I was born, when my parents were meeting, and really trying to imagine what that time was like.”

Molly Ringwald, Christopher Lloyd, Dylan Baker, Christina Hendricks and Sharif Atkins head the ensemble of “The Big Time,” which is set in a struggling TV network that is owned and operated by an eccentric millionaire inventor (Lloyd). Ringwald plays the inventor’s young bride, who realizes the potential in the fledgling medium. Baker is the devoted producer and vice president of programming for the network. Hendricks is the perky girl from the Midwest who comes to New York and gets a job as the producer’s secretary, and Atkins plays a jazz musician who gets a gig for his group, the Royal Flush, on the network.

In one powerful sequence, Lloyd’s character flies into a rage after he sees the Royal Flush performing on television. Atkins’ Joe Royal had broken an unwritten law: At that time, no African American could address the audience, and Royal sang directly to the camera.

“I didn’t know African Americans could not speak directly to the camera,” says Barclay, who is African American. “I asked Frankenheimer about that, and he said, absolutely. It wasn’t like it was ever spoken about, but it was understood.”

“The Big Time” can be seen Sunday at 8 and 10 p.m. on TNT. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under 14).

Cover photograph by Chris Cuffaro for TNT. From left, Molly Ringwald, Christina Hendricks, Christopher Lloyd, Dylan Baker, Sharif Atkins (seated), Shane Maikael Johnson and Michael B. Silver.