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Beulah Land (1980)
Rate:
3
Viewed:
6/24
6/24:
File Beulah Land under "What the Hell Were They Thinking?"
The downfall began right from the beginning with the introduction of the kids. Failing to establish my connection to them,
especially their names, the show just went to the next part when everybody had grown up as adults. I was trying to grasp
what's going on in terms of characters and subplots but never could. Eventually, I stopped caring anymore. When Sarah Pennington
and Casey Troy embraced each other at the end, I felt nothing. No wonder why the adapted screenwriter opted for a
silly-sounding pseudonym: Jacques Meunier.
It was never an issue in Gone with the Wind, Roots,
and North and South. No matter how many characters were thrown at me, the filmmakers
took the time to develop them, and I was able to keep up with everything including the subplots. But in Beulah Land, I was
constantly asking myself, "Who's Jubal?", "Who the hell is Annabel?", "Farrow...Farrow...uh?", "Where did Alonzo come from?", etc.
Why did Lesley Ann Warren have the most developed character to the detriment of everybody else except for a few? It's because the
timeline kept skipping ahead by seven years constantly. After forty-five years later, it's impressive how ageless most characters
were.
So many subplots would be initiated, but they're either hardly followed through or dropped altogether. Early on, Madeleine
Stowe's character got plenty of attention, and then, she stopped appearing anymore. Finally, she did just once for the school
opening with ten minutes left in the show after forty-five years for what must be the longest lesbian affair of screen history
inside the bedroom. The similar thing happened to Don Johnson whose character was summarily offed. Talk about killing off two of
the biggest assets so early. Elsewhere, Floyd touched Sarah's hand, and all of a sudden, he escaped to the North before coming back
years later in regret despite looking full and healthy. For his reward, he was granted the job of an overseer so he could happily
whip the slaves into shape to do everything as they could to save the plantation.
Not to be outdone, the filmmakers decided to insert a lot of historically inaccurate stuff to depict the Old South with strange
zoom effect. The biggest jaw-dropper was teaching slaves how to read and write when it was a capital offense in Georgia that time.
Then, there's the Utopian plantation life with happy black slaves who wouldn't think of leaving, no matter what, especially after
they had been, in fact, freed. I seriously doubted Sarah's painting of such seductive nature would've been either undertaken or
accepted. When the Union soldiers came over to do their worst, I was surprised to see they raped a pregnant black female but left
the rest of the white women alone. Obviously, the house should've burned down, but it's magically restored like new.
What I didn't understand was why the filmmakers set the show in Georgia when they shot the whole thing on location in Natchez,
Mississippi. Wouldn't it be easier to just state that instead? Being a lot closer to
North and South which actually came out five years later, I wouldn't say
Beulah Land was a rip-off of Gone with the Wind, but it's certainly guilty of
it in some elements, most especially when a scene showed Lauretta being in the middle of countless seriously injured Confederate
soldiers.
All in all, Beulah Land is the worst TV miniseries I've ever seen in my life.