What is a TV movie?

A TV movie is a film that is made for TV, it is never intended for cinema release. As a result, the film has a much lower budget for retaining stars, location travel, sets, props and special effects. Many of these films tend to be of quite poor quality, with bad plotlines and unbelievable¹ characters.

Many stars of TV movies went on to bigger and better things, like Matt LeBlanc, now in Friends and Eric Roberts, who is now appearing in more mainstream films. Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5, TRON) also started in TV movies, as did Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap, Enterprise).

What is a 'made for video' movie?

A made for video film is similar to the TV movie. This is a film that is never intended for general cinema release, but is released straight to video/DVD instead. The film is usually of a lower quality than cinema goers would expect, so it would not fare well on general release. In effect, it could be described as a budget film.

The Artist formerly known as CGI

Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) or CG as it is now known has allowed special effects to be much more impressive with a much smaller budget. Although this usually affects science fiction TV movies, where shot sof the ships were done with models and were very expensive, CG is moving into other areas, such as making a crowd in the background, or skyscrapers.

Sequels

Under Siege was a good film, but Under Siege 2 , although it went on general cinema release, was so bad as to be almost TV movie quality. Steven Segal's career pretty much sank without trace after that film, which is ironic if you think about the plot of the first film. The first film was believable because the bad guys used believable weapons, namely guns and had a good actor, Tommy Lee Jones as the villain. The second film had computers hacking into orbiting satellites that make earthquakes. There has never been a good film that featured computer hacking as the main plot line, and there probably never will be. It's never believable to the audience because they either don't know enough about computers to "get it", or they know enough to know that the plot is impossible.

Many highly sucessful cinema release films have made for video sequels, such as the Universal Soldier films. They are a landmark in films, being initially a cinema film, then making a few made for video films, then going back to a cinema film.

Budgets²

Film budgets are sometimes also cut just before or during shooting. If the budget drops below a certain threshold, the director and producer may have to decide whether to make a mediocre cinema film, or a very good TV/made for video movie. Several TV movies were originally written to be cinema release, then downgraded to TV movie, so they have good sets and actors, but are let down by the post-production work (special effects, soundtrack, etc). The Captain America film is an example of this. It was originally to be a cinema film, but at the last minute before shooting started, it was downgraded to a made for video film.

Many TV movies are the start or end of a TV series, such as the Knight Rider 2000 film, set 10 years after the Knight Rider series³. It rounded off the series nicely, but was missing several components from the series, most noticably the black Pontiac Trans Am car.

Pleasant Surprises

There are of course, plenty of quite good TV movies and a few really rather excellent ones. Alien Cargo is a fairly good adaptation of a classic sci-fi short story, and some TV movies even attain cult status, like Battlestar Gallactica.

Toy Story 2 was supposed to be a straight to video film, but went on general release instead and made a fortune, far surpassing the original.

Babylon 5 had a set five season storyline, but after the series finished, several very good staight to video feature length episodes were released.

The Doctor Who TV movie was an enjoyable film, although only the uneditted version⁴ as opposed to the edited verion⁵.

How To Avoiding Wasting Two Hours Of Your Life

This is not to say that all TV movies are bad, just as not all formula 1 races are won by Michael Schumacher, but many are quite poor quality films and classed under "rainy day"⁶ in most people's book.

Avoid films with titles like: Death Trip, Bloodsville, Return To Scream Castle⁷.

• Death
• Terror
• Dude
• Teen
• Road
• Return

Also films with very long titles are generally bad. Think about it, if the synopsis was simple, would the film need a long name?

TV and made for video films tend to have quite bad titles. The titles also have a tendancy to give away most of the plot, like Death Train, or Night Stalker. Even a Hollywood film producer could guess at the plot of films like those.