The minuses for the MOW are well known. The level of production has fallen steadily over the last decade and shows no sign of a significant upturn. At the broadcast networks, television movies have become an endangered species, replaced by shows featuring bikini-clad young women diving into tubs filled with piranhas.

The positives, however, are just as real. Those productions making it to the screen — mostly on cable networks — have never been more vibrant or arresting, and these films suggest that the current crop of television directors may be reshaping the way people think about films made for the small screen.

This latter trend was demonstrated clearly by a number of notable productions over the past year. Mike Nichols' Angels in America — winner of the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television — and others represent the kind of risk-taking efforts that were rarely seen a decade ago and, some industry veterans believe, will constitute the leading edge of television movies in the future.

Whether these attention-grabbing movies will stir industry executives to increase production remains to be seen. But clearly they represent a break from the past and suggest there are new opportunities to make television movies that are both compelling and personal.

"You can give the cable companies all the credit for this," says Jane Anderson, DGA Award nominee for Normal. "If it was left to the networks, television movies would be long dead. HBO, Showtime and Turner are making it an exciting time because they give filmmakers a chance to do offbeat and experimental work. The cable companies don't have to worry about opening wide on the weekend, so they are in a position to take risks. It's just a miracle to me."

Rod Holcomb, DGA Award nominee for The Pentagon Papers, largely agrees. "A decade ago we were stuck in that disease-of-the-week mode that marked a kind of low point," he says. "The movies were shot in Canada in two or three locations, and they all started to look the same. I find there's more of an adventuresome spirit now, and directors have more freedom to put their own stamp on the film."

In some recent instances, in fact, it has been the director who created the concept and written the script. That's what Jane Anderson did with Normal.

"Normal began as a play, and it was running at the Geffen Playhouse," Anderson says. "[HBO Films President] Colin Callender and [HBO Sr. Vice President, Development & Production] Keri Putnam came to see it and liked it. In about a week, they said, 'OK, let's do it.' It was stunningly simple."

An HBO release such as Normal will never attract the kind of large audience that once was demanded of network television movies. A cable audience of 2 million viewers for a television movie is usually regarded as a success. In the old days, a network movie needed to attract upward of 50 million viewers to be considered a respectable hit.

"This means, with cable, you can play a niche audience and that's an advantage in many ways," says Mick Garris, director of such television movies as The Stand, Stephen King's The Shining and the upcoming feature film Riding the Bullet. "It means you can pay attention to your particular audience and explore the nuances. You don't have to appeal to everybody."

In many ways, the cable movies made today constitute a throwback to the early days of the MOW. In those days, the networks saw television movies as an opportunity to offer more serious fare than that served up by the typical weekly series. The very first network movie to make its premiere on television, in fact, was See How They Run, a tense mobster drama that starred John Forsythe and was directed by David Lowell Rich.

Over the next decade or so, other television movies dealt with interracial love (My Sweet Charlie in 1970, directed by Lamont Johnson); grimy prison life (The Glass House in 1972, directed by Tom Gries and written by Truman Capote); and the problems faced by a gay father (That Certain Summer in 1972, also directed by Lamont Johnson).

In so doing, the MOW became known as the genre that explored the touch points of American culture. But it was not achieved easily or without conflict. Four-time DGA Movies for Television Award winner Lamont Johnson recalls that the networks often hesitated before approving projects involving controversial subjects. This was especially the case with My Sweet Charlie.

"There was a lot of anxiety about it at the network," Johnson says. "You might say terror. But they finally said, 'go ahead,' and the film got great notices and great ratings. At that point, naturally, the anxiety eased."

These days, Johnson says, there's no way the networks would approve that project or, for that matter, many of the productions from the 1970s. And the reason, he says, is not only a reluctance to confront controversial subjects.

"This may sound cynical on my part but I think audiences have become so conditioned to fast-paced action, a camera cut every two seconds, and perpetual explosions that the older kind of character-driven dramas are simply not acceptable these days on the networks," he says.

On the other hand, Johnson says, the cable networks often air dramas similar to those that appeared on the networks in earlier decades.

Dan Petrie Sr., a three-time DGA Movies for Television Award winner and whose 1999 adaptation of Inherit the Wind received a DGA nomination, agrees with that assessment. "They have done a spectacular job at HBO, and Showtime has done some very good things also," Petrie says. "They are carrying forward the same tradition of making films about politics and social issues. I know that's what attracted many of us to television at the time — the opportunity to address issues that were important to our lives."

So, in all, where does that leave the MOW at its 40th anniversary? Still threatened, surely, and still facing many questions about its economic future, but also reemerging from the ashes in a form that is eerily reminiscent of its early, vibrant days.

"In one sense, the demise of the Movie of the Week on the networks has worked to the advantage of directors," says Anderson. "The cable companies want more sophisticated films because they sense their audience is more sophisticated. And they are turning to the directors to deliver that. We are getting more control and more freedom and more opportunity to make a statement. That, in the end, is good news."