Inspectors 81 are back on the tough streets of San Francisco for a fourth season of gritty police work. Remember, these are the same streets Dirty Harry worked during the same decade. There are some memorable moments in this next half season release of “Streets”. In case you don’t know the show, here’s a rundown. Detective  “Iron”  Mike Stone (Karl Malden) is a seasoned veteran of the San Francisco Police Department. He’s an old-fashioned, no-nonsense detective whose life has taken some bitter turns of late. Much to his aggravation, he gets partnered with Keller (Michael Douglas), a green detective who hasn’t lost his belief that he can make a difference. Together they just might be able to teach each other something. Before long the two develop a teacher/mentor relationship that works well enough to solve the cases and get the bad guys.

If you weren’t around in the 1970’s, you might be surprised to find out that film superstar Michael Douglas was once in a television cop show. It was this influential crime drama that allowed Douglas to show off the acting chops that would earn him a spot in the Hollywood elite for decades to come. It didn’t hurt any that he was able to team up with Karl Malden, an undervalued talent in his own right. The two of them bring the show to life.  The series was run by Quinn Martin, himself no stranger to groundbreaking television. Martin was the same talent who created the crime drama with The Untouchables. His uncanny ability to come up with a clever premise was responsible for such milestones in television history as The Invaders and The Fugitive. Later he would continue to shape the look of television with shows like Tales Of The Unexpected, The FBI, and Most Wanted. He was the Steven Bochco of his time. Long before NYPD Blue, Martin was able to make San Francisco, the city itself, an iatrical character for Malden and Douglas to interact with. The show had tremendous style, even if the cases were purely formula. Certainly you won’t find anything in these plots you haven’t seen a hundred times before. What you will find is a unique presentation that somehow makes even the most mundane story appear quite compelling. If you enjoy the Bochco and Wolf dramas or fall in with such classics as Starsky and Hutch or Miami Vice, you owe a tremendous debt to Martin for setting the table for all of those fantastic meals that would follow.

After solar storms ravage the earth causing the soil to overheat and scorch our forests, the few who survive are left in a barren wasteland that stretches across the globe.  The concept is an impressive one to explain the desert world we are first introduced to in the opening moments of Hell, though what’s more impressive is how this low-budget, post-apocalyptic film managed this look with simple camera tricks.  With Roland Emmerich involved as executive producer, you may be expecting big-budget recreations of famous landmarks exploding and wiped away in a giant tidal wave.  Instead what you get with Hell is an intimate tale of two sisters struggling to survive in a world where their hope rests in simply finding a small part of the world where water is readily available.

When we first meet Marie (Hannah Herzsprung) and Leonie (Lisa Vicari) they are passengers travelling along an empty stretch of highway with newspapers taped over the windows with only a hole large enough for the driver, Phillip, to see out of.  Stopping at what remains of a gas station, our trio of survivors scavenge the place for gas and any supplies to take with them.  It’s here that they encounter Tom, a mechanic who offers his skills in exchange for some cans of peaches and to join them on their journey into the mountains to find water.

It’s not often, if ever that you’ll find me looking forward to a Hallmark Channel movie.  I have nothing against a good romance or sappy family dramas; it’s just that guys for the most part are not the target demographic.  To get to the point, this film is the chick flick guys fear being made to watch after losing the battle at the Red Box when all the other appealing titles are out and the wife or girlfriend is in no mood for action.  But thankfully the film isn’t all bad, and in fact it’s actually decent with the exception of a few clichés along the way.

Vivian (Jane Seymour) and Ray (Jeff Fahey) are living the dream after 30-plus years of marriage and still happily in love.  Together they live along the shore of Smith Mountain Lake where they have built the home of their dreams.  Everything is great till one morning Ray sets off to go fishing and ends up blowing himself up when trying to grill some fish along the shore.  This devastates the small town and the family, causing Sara (Scottie Thompson) to return to Virginia while she is in the middle of a making a deal that is sure to make her partner at her law firm in Los Angeles.  It’s been years since Sara has been back, but nothing has changed but her.  With Lily (Madeline Zima), her younger sister, Sara does what she can to get through the funeral as fast as she can so she can return to LA and make partner.  Of course Lily can’t understand why Sara always resented living in the small town, and Vivian feels nothing more than an inconvenience to her daughter ,so of course grief and tension bring them to argue and then move on to tears.