Sundance Channel

"June 17, 1994" is Brett Morgen's tone-poem documentary about a day in the life of American sports and heroes of sport. It was the day that Arnold Palmer played his final, fraught round at a U.S. Open, the day the World Cup began in Chicago, that the New York Rangers got a ticker-tape parade for winning the Stanley Cup, that the Knicks and the Rockets played the fifth game of the NBA finals. Most famously, it was the day that, with former teammate Al Cowlings at the wheel, O.J. Simpson, charged with the murder of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, took his slow ride around the freeways of Southern California in a white Ford Bronco, holding a gun to his head.

A loud screeching sound echoed across the oval racetrack as a driver burned rubber, revving the engine of a silver Mercedes-Benz and spinning the vehicle a full 360 degrees while kicking up a cloud of dust and smoke. This wasn't a stock car race, but a shoot for an upcoming Mercedes commercial that was being filmed at Irwindale Speedway, where about two dozen crew members huddled Monday morning under blue pop-up tents next to camera stands and film equipment to escape the suffocating 104-degree heat.

A loud screeching sound echoed across the oval racetrack as a driver burned rubber, revving the engine of a silver Mercedes-Benz and spinning the vehicle a full 360 degrees while kicking up a cloud of dust and smoke. This wasn't a stock car race, but a shoot for an upcoming Mercedes commercial that was being filmed at Irwindale Speedway, where about two dozen crew members huddled Monday morning under blue pop-up tents next to camera stands and film equipment to escape the suffocating 104-degree heat.

In a grassy backyard in the small town of Griffin, Ga., about 25 miles south of Atlanta, actor Aden Young is rehearsing a fight scene for the upcoming Sundance Channel series “Rectify.” It's early August, and the steam heat has crew and onlookers grappling for the scant amount of shade available. But Young is practicing a series of complicated stunt punches and undercuts. Later in the air-conditioned lunch trailer, the only respite from the suffocating heat, the actor makes light of his working conditions.

How's this for reaching to find a promotional hook? The Sundance Channel, recognizing that Monday is the shortest day of the year, is programming a full day of--what else?--short films to celebrate the winter solstice. Maybe it should have gotten songwriter Randy Newman ("Short People") to pen some theme music.

Cablevision Systems Corp. said Wednesday that it was wading deeper into the cable programming business by buying the Sundance Channel from its famous co-founder, Robert Redford, and two media companies for $496 million. The move surprised some analysts because Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision, through its Rainbow Media Holdings subsidiary, already owns two movie channels -- AMC and the Independent Film Channel -- in addition to WE tv, a channel aimed at women. Some investors had wanted the family-controlled cable systems operator to use its cash to buy back shares.

Since the current writers strike was first bruited, the prospect of more reality TV has been held out to the public like a threat -- coal in the stocking at Christmas, the boogeyman waiting in the closet. People watch a lot of reality TV as it is, but I suspect that even among its most ardent fans there are many who sense there is something not quite right about it, something not . . . real.

Upping the ante on any TV show that got off to as auspicious a start as the first season of the Sundance Channel's music interview-performance series "Spectacle: Elvis Costello With…" is a tall order. After all, the first episode featured a conversation with Elton John -- not coincidentally, one of the executive producers and a key mover behind the series -- before pairing its deeply knowledgeable, erudite and witty host with subsequent guests, including Tony Bennett, Smokey Robinson, Lou Reed, Norah Jones, Rufus Wainwright, Renée Fleming and former President Clinton.

European entertainment conglomerate PolyGram said Monday that it is buying a half-interest in the Sundance Channel, a new cable channel co-founded by actor-director Robert Redford and Viacom Inc.'s Showtime Networks that features independent films. Sources said PolyGram will probably end up investing from $30 million to $40 million in the deal, depending on such factors as how quickly the channel rolls out.

Independent female directors who have struggled to get their films made and seen by the public have found a home on the Sundance Channel. The cable channel's mission--showcasing the works of emerging filmmakers--will devote the month of April to the diversity and artistry of women filmmakers. She Said Cinema--now in its third year--will air a different feature directed by a woman each night. And on Sundays, Sundance will present short films.

Sundance Channel's "Rectify" is the first and possibly only television show one can imagine Flannery O'Connor blogging about. It isn't just good TV, it's revelatory TV. The genre's biggest potential game changer since AMC debuted the one-two punch of "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad. " "Television can do that?" we asked in wonder as Don Draper squinted in cultural allegory over his Scotch on the rocks. Yes it can, and now, thanks to creator Ray McKinnon and the cast of "Rectify," television can also immerse the viewer in a gloriously rich and careful study of how endurance and faith, strength and surrender, fear and serenity balance to form the essential nature of humanity.

"The Island President" (PBS, Monday, 10 p.m.). Comprising 2,000 pancake-flat islands in the Indian Ocean, with a mean elevation of about five feet above sea level, the Maldives will be the first nation to go, literally, when the oceans rise. Jon Shenk's documentary follows then-president Mohamed Nasheed on a mission to save his country, his people and maybe the world. A frequently jailed activist who once spent 18 months in solitary confinement in a corrugated iron shed, Nasheed hits the road to make his quixotic case for environmental responsibility.

"Top of the Lake" is the first miniseries from filmmaker Jane Campion of New Zealand ("The Piano," "Bright Star"). I have seen only the first three of its seven parts, which begin Monday with two episodes on Sundance Channel, and though I suppose there is some chance it all will go off the rails, early signs suggest it will bend toward something even more mysterious, beautiful, unsettling and satisfying than the mysterious, beautiful, unsettling, satisfying...

It's a sun-soaked afternoon in Los Angeles, but Elisabeth Moss is shivering. Sitting in the back room at the Pikey on Sunset Boulevard, Moss recalls how cold the water was in New Zealand, where she filmed "Top of the Lake," a miniseries created by Jane Campion that premieres Monday on the Sundance Channel. "The lake is the same temperature all year round: freezing," says Moss, wearing a loose white cotton dress, her short brown hair tucked neatly behind one ear. "My makeup artist had this black plastic bucket and they would fill it with hot water and I would go sit in it fully clothed to warm up. " It's an odd detail, but it's in keeping with the making of the moody crime drama, filmed over a five-month period against a staggeringly beautiful natural backdrop of soaring mountains, rugged bush and the omnipresent lake.

For a nation bewitched by period dramas in which men wear hats and sip whiskey while making eyes at crimson-lipped women who smoke an endless succession of unfiltered cigarettes, the Sundance Channel miniseries "Restless" offers all that and more. Adapted by William Boyd from his novel of the same name, the miniseries, which premieres Friday, centers on a secret British intelligence agency attempting to draw the reluctant United States into World War II. Which means in addition to the fabulous clothes, there's a fabulous British cast, not to mention the endlessly fascinating world of espionage and a bit of revelatory World War II history.

It is odd, though perhaps not surprising, that just as one sub-genre of reality television revels in bad behavior - conspicuous consumption, the petty rivalries of wives and friends and parents - another attempts to chronicle the various paths to personal transformation, perhaps even redemption. Like its evil twin, this subset tends to operate in primary colors, deconstructing the problems and solutions into TV-accessible narrative arcs in a way that is often irritating and sometimes dangerous - as soon as they made it "Celebrity Rehab," it was clear the emphasis would not be on recovery.

Karl Lagerfeld loves the smell of construction sites, hates people who can't be alone, and he won't fly without the cushion his nanny made for him nestled on his stomach. He's pro-prostitution, one of his favorite art supplies is Wite-Out and he doesn't believe in reincarnation. He's one of the most important fashion designers of our day, but more than that, he's a fascinating character, as evidenced by Rodolphe Marconi's terrific documentary "Lagerfeld Confidential," which has its U.S.

'2011 Festival' Where: Sundance Channel When: 9:45 p.m. Friday; 9:25 p.m. Saturday; 9:35 p.m. Sunday; 9:35 p.m. Monday; 9:25 p.m. Tuesday; 9:45 p.m. Wednesday; 9:45 p.m. Thursday; 9:45 p.m. Friday; 9:40 p.m. Saturday Rating: Not rated 'White Lightnin" Where: Sundance When: 8 p.m. Sunday and 4:45 a.m. Monday Rating: Not rated 'Unmade Beds' Where: Sundance Channel When: 8 p.m. Wednesday and 1:35 a.m....

The essential demands of creating a reality television series inevitably foil even the best intentions of capturing real life. And this being the entertainment industry, not everyone of course has the best intentions. Situational shows, in which a group of carefully cast people is assembled and forced to interact as "friends," are the worst offenders. They are often so scripted, manipulated and edited that the only thing separating them from nonreality shows is the level of acting and the union dues.

When Emily Watson heard she was being sent a script for "Appropriate Adult," she was wary. The made-for-TV movie, which premieres Saturday on Sundance Channel, depicts the real-life relationship between British serial killer Fred West and Janet Leach, a social worker in training who was asked to sit in on police interrogations as an "appropriate adult," a role in the United Kingdom legal system meant to safeguard the rights of young people and vulnerable adults...