Lifetime movies have perfected the art of the guilty pleasure.
Rarely has a television entity, especially one that started out as bland daytime talk
TV, demonstrated such astonishing versatility.
This is how Lifetime went from being America's source of guilty pleasures to stuff that Emmy
Award statuettes are made of.
It's rather amusing that Lifetime, a channel famous for its myriad tabloid-style enjoyments,
was initially mistaken for religious programming in its infancy.
According to South Carolina's Herald-Journal:
"It got off to a miserable start, losing a reported $36 million in its first two years."
It was partially because viewers associated it with church broadcasting, for whatever
reason.
In truth, however, Lifetime was far from militantly pious.
In fact, the network even gave figures like plucky romance therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer
their own syndicated talk shows.
Even in the network's early days of struggle, Westheimer was responsible for some of the
channel's highest ratings, a standing she maintained until 1991, even though the network
was said to have been initially "wary" of her frank, graphic, and exuberant approach.
With ratings plummeting and television doom looming on the horizon in the late 1980s,
Lifetime's powers-that-be knew they had to do something.
So they drastically revamped their image, with a decidedly lurid and melodramatic spin
as a guiding principle.
"Don't you move, or I will cut her head off."
In 1990, the channel's own new "lifetime" launched in the form of the made-for-TV thriller
Memories of Murder, which starred Nancy Allen as an amnesiac housewife who has no clue that
she's being stalked by a lunatic.
The cheesy thriller was an instant success with viewers, critical reception notwithstanding.
From then on, the hits, like the famous Mother, May I Sleep With Danger, starring Beverly
Hills, 90210's Tori Spelling, and the decidedly NSFW-sounding Co-Ed Call Girl, also starring
Tori Spelling, just kept coming.
Interestingly enough, and despite the channel's cherished tabloid style, Lifetime's viewers
also took its programming seriously.
The network had, after all, branded itself as "Television for Women," which ultimately
gave it something important to live up to.
And contrary to popular belief, the programs weren't by any means all about melodrama.
Themes like discordant parent-child dynamics, marital problems, and feminist causes also
resonated seriously with viewers.
And that's part of the reason that Telecommunications Inc.'s mid-1990s proposal to drop the channel
was met with such vehement opposition.
"You had no right to tell them I would go!"
Though the company's decision was primarily mercenary, rather than specifically anti-feminist,
many female viewers saw the proposal differently.
One of those people was Colorado Democratic Representative Patricia Schroeder, who told
The New York Times:
"Women kind of feel like they're being rolled over so that the guys who run these companies
can make more money."
Protests from various women's groups ensued, and the channel stayed put.
By the time the '90s rolled around, Lifetime's status as one of television's most beloved
guilty pleasures was well-established.
As The Washington Post put it:
"The more devastating the movie topic, the better for business...The horrifying (but
captivating) plots became a running joke within the industry, but the viewers couldn't get
enough."
Indeed, films like My Stepson, My Lover, Another Woman's Husband, and the bluntly-named Daddy,
based on one of Danielle Steel's schmaltzy supermarket novels, went on to take top honors
in Lifetime's lurid-but-irresistible hierarchy.
The network's great early days also ushered in She Woke up Pregnant, which featured iconic
Wonder Woman Lynda Carter and A Woman Scorned, starring Meredith Baxter as the very creatively
vengeful wronged party whose husband leaves her for a younger woman.
"What the hell was that?"
Lifetime's "guilty pleasure" movies continued to be a hit with their fanbase well into the
'90s.
By the latter part of the decade, the channel had become the place for the most sensational
of movies.
Arturo Interian, vice president of Lifetime original movies, detailed to The Washington
Post in 2015:
" 'Teens in jeopardy' was an incredibly successful genre for us.
We would literally sit around a room and talk about all the horrible things that could happen
to teens, or what teens could do."
Although such films did bode well for the company at that time, Lifetime began 86ing
the cringe-worthy titles, over-dramatic tropes, and even those beloved worst case scenario
storylines.
"There was never a phone order.
He never put in for a phone order.
He lied to me!"
Tanya Lopez, senior vice president of original film programming, told the publication:
"I think the goal was to make the movies more relevant.
Make them feel more contemporary.
Make them build a new audience.
Not just keep the audience that we had...and we really had to turn this cruise ship around."
By 2009, when the channel was taken over by A&E, it had received enough critical acclaim
to inspire executives to begin a concerted effort to push programming into territory
that wasn't primarily defined by melodrama, even though the delightful old-school cheese
that we all love hasn't entirely gone, thankfully.
In 2008, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, about a father who gives his newborn daughter away
because she has Down Syndrome, received enthusiastic reviews and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination,
as did 2009's Prayers for Bobby, about a gay man who takes his own life because his mother
won't accept his sexuality.
The latter also garnered Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Producers Guild of America
Award nominations, and nabbed the GLADD Media Award in 2010.
If Lifetime has gone from cheese to acclaim since its inception, there's a great reason
for it: the vast number of gifted female directors the channel has gone out of its way to hire
over the years.
Actress Diane Keaton made her directorial debut on Lifetime in the form of Wildflower,
one of the channel's first so-called "cerebral" movies, and actress Angela Bassett directed
Whitney, one of the channel's most successful biopics.
Other star directors to work on movies for Lifetime have included Mary Harron and Agnieszka
Holland.
That's a pretty impressive and intellectually impressive lineup for a channel that started
out with tabloid TV movies.
The number of now-famous stars who got their start, or at least made burgeoning or mid-career
appearances, in Lifetime movies might really surprise some people, too.
The then-largely unknown Reese Witherspoon, for example, co-starred with a pre-True Romance
Patricia Arquette in the aforementioned Wildflower, a story about the relationship between a girl
and her deaf friend.
"I learned of family from them.
I learned of living together, I learned of love."
A not yet Twilight-famous Kristen Stewart tore up the screen in 2004's Speak, a story
about a high school student trying to cope with the aftermath of sexual assault.
In 2004, before he broke ground with High School Musical, Zac Efron appeared in Miracle
Run, the gripping story of two autistic brothers.
And in 1998, Kirsten Dunst, then still primarily famous for playing child vampire Claudia in
Interview With the Vampire, starred in Lifetime favorite Fifteen and Pregnant, playing the
proverbial young mother in trouble.
And Nina Dobrev of The Vampire Diaries starred in 2007's Too Young to Marry, the tale of
an ardent and impetuous teenaged couple who are determined to get hitched, even though
everyone else thinks that it's a terrible idea.
While you may think of Lifetime as a Mickey Mouse Club of sorts, the channel isn't just
a starting point for actors hoping to get recognized.
In fact, the network has lured some stars who don't need any help getting noticed.
In 2015, hilariously funny Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell starred in the totally unfunny
film A Deadly Adoption.
Perhaps due to the campy title and the fact that the lead actors are best known for their
comedic work, many thought the movie was satirical.
However, Wiig told Vulture that it, quote, "wasn't a parody."
She said:
"I think people assumed it was [a comedy] because Will and I were in it, but it wasn't."
Lifetime has also served as a plan B for A-list actors.
In 2015, Academy Award-winning actress Nicole Kidman starred in the biopic Grace of Monaco.
Due to behind-the-scenes drama and some seriously bad early reviews, TV Guide highlighted how
this film went from, quote, "Oscar hopeful to Lifetime movie."
Sure, Lifetime isn't always the goal for actors, but it's not a bad place to end up.
"I was brought up to participate.
My father would have been most upset to see someone without enthusiasm."
The number of Emmy Award nominations Lifetime has racked up over the years is nothing short
of impressive.
Actress Thora Birch, known for her roles in American Beauty and Ghost World, was nominated
for her role in Lifetime's 2003 TV movie Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story.
The same year Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy received an Emmy nomination in 2007, iconic
actress Gena Rowlands was nominated for What if God Were the Sun.
In 2009, Shirley MacLaine was nominated for the biopic Coco Chanel.
2014 saw The Trip to Bountiful get nominated for outstanding television movie.
Cicely Tyson, the film's lead actress, also received a personal nomination for her brilliant
performance.
This list goes on and on.
By 2017, the channel accrued a whopping 23 Emmy nominations.
Steel Magnolias was far from the first Lifetime film to earn an Emmy nomination, of course,
but the movie served as the channel's catalyst for change.
Lisa Hamilton Daly, Lifetime's vice president of original movies, told The Washington Post:
"I think Steel Magnolias was when we realized we had an audience out there who wanted that
kind of quality programming that was for them."
According to the publication, an incredible 6.5 million people tuned into the channel
to watch the movie.
The remake starring lead actress Queen Latifah and an all-black supporting cast not only
garnered nominations from the TV academy, but it also earned some stellar reviews.
The film's success encouraged Lifetime to create more of their own unique movies as
well as take on projects they thought would elicit a similar response to that of Steel
Magnolias.
One of Lifetime's most successful and acclaimed films was 2017's I Am Elizabeth Smart, the
graphically rendered story of Elizabeth Smart's bloodcurdling 2002 abduction and rescue.
The film received almost unanimously rave reviews for its writing and acting, but it
was particularly notable because Smart herself both co-produced it and narrated it.
The movie, not uncoincidentally, aired on the 15th anniversary of Smart's abduction.
Although she later said that collaborating on the project was significantly traumatic,
and that seeing actor Skeet Ulrich so convincingly done up as her kidnapper was particularly
unnerving, Smart made it clear that she didn't regret the experience.
Lifetime's cast and crew were almost equally moved by participating in the experience,
as were many critics.
As Variety put it:
"I Am Elizabeth Smart is...a remarkable Lifetime movie.
Much like Smart herself, it is restrained, unpretentious, and direct.
And to the cast and crew's credit, nothing about it diminishes Smart's ordeal or plays
it up for manufactured horrors; it simply is, which is plenty horrible enough."
For many, nothing says Christmas quite like Lifetime.
In 2018, the network put even more emphasis on their holiday programming, which is aptly
called "It's A Wonderful Lifetime."
That year, the channel introduced a whopping 23 films.
Tanya Lopez told People:
"By stacking our originals with beloved stars from some of the most iconic television shows
we grew up with, we are tapping into the nostalgic feelings of familiarity and comfort that everyone
wants for the holidays."
"Christmas is magical.
It's a time where anything can happen."
Not one to be outdone by their own success, Lifetime announced plans to shatter their
own holiday movie record yet again.
As People reported in July 2019, the network revealed a 28-film lineup ahead of the holiday
season.
Rob Sharenow, Lifetime's executive vice president and general manager, told BuzzFeed News in
2016:
"Lifetime pioneered so many genres that ended up taking over television.
The medical drama, we had that 20 years ago.
The female cop drama, we had that back when no one was programming cable dramas."
Despite being a trailblazer, the network hasn't always received the credit it deserves.
It's battled, quote, "an incredible unfair bias," Sharenow added.
But it was his goal to change that.
He explained:
"I wanted Lifetime to be more in the bullseye of pop culture, first and foremost.
I really wanted to force the conversation about Lifetime into more of the mainstream
pop culture, not in this Lifetime ghetto."
At the same time, the network has also learned to lean into its campy image, which is evidenced
by films like the 2016 vampire-twisted remake of Mother, May I Sleep With Danger.
Tanya Lopez told the publication:
"I think we are embracing the cultural impact of Lifetime movies upon generations, and not
being embarrassed by it.
What we're showing by doing these is, look where we were, and look where we are.
It's much more entertaining."
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