Sarah, Plain and Tall: Winter's End (TV)

The third and final episode of the Sarah, Plain and Tall series is a 1999 production reuniting stars Glenn Close and Christopher Walken with original director Glenn Jordan. Taking the story eight years beyond the original tale, Winter's End is set in a harsh Kansas winter of 1918, with the specter of death everywhere: soldiers are dying overseas during World War I, influenza is at epidemic proportions in the U.S., and an old man has returned to the Witting farm with an uncertain reception. He's John Witting (Jack Palance), father of Jacob (Walken), and the two men have not seen each other since John abandoned his son years ago. Reconciliation comes hard, punctuated by cliffhanger disasters (Jacob breaks his leg and burns with a fever, Sarah almost dies in a heavy snowstorm), but this most brutal of trial periods for the Wittings still invites a viewer to yearn for a more innocent--perhaps mythical--time in America. A worthy and rewarding finish to a trilogy fit for families yet sophisticated enough for all ages, Winter's End may be one of the last network television classics in an era of audience relocation to multichannel cable. - Tom Keogh, Amazon.com