Wouk mixes historical reenactments with a compelling, many-tiered fictional tale-the war as it affected the world and people who fought it.

The miniseries is in a class with 'Roots' and ranks as a considerable improvement over the 1983 blockbuster, 'The Winds of War,' to which it is a sequel.Ī dramatic departure from what has been a season of sleaze on network television, 'War and Remembrance' confronts great and abiding issues, matters of life and death. ABC executives have already noted, perhaps more with pride than sorrow, that the network stands to lose as much as $20 million on the show, no matter how much advertising is sold.But dollars and profits seem trivial in dealing with 'War and Remembrance,' which includes sequences of deep emotional intimacy upon its panoramic canvas. A total of at least 30 hours, produced at a cost of $110 million, is planned. 4) with a three-hour opener - and the rest will appear later in the TV season, probably February or May. The first 18 hours of this harrowing epic will air in November - starting Sunday night, Nov.

The production is vast, mammoth, on a scale virtually unheard of for TV. Relatively few entertainment programs in the history of broadcasting have qualified for the term 'monumental.' But the word fits 'War and Remembrance,' ABC's shattering and spectacular miniseries from Herman Wouk's novel of World War II.

The winds of war war and remembrance