It has a sexy young American student and a brutal murder of another young woman -- just the right formula for a made-for-Lifetime movie.
And the cable channel obliges tonight at 8, with Hayden Panetierre, best known as the cheerleader who needed saving in "Heroes," starring in "Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy."
The new docudrama lays out the evidence in the heinous 2007 murder of young British university student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, without pretending to know what really happened.
For the record, Knox was convicted, along with her Italian boyfriend and a drifter of sexual assaulting and murdering the 20-year-old Brit.
It was the British media that first turned the murder case into a series of tabloid headlines, taking a childhood nickname for Knox, Foxy Knoxy, and using it to help turn the young woman from Seattle into a femme fatale.
Panetierre's Knox is a mystery, sometimes cold and emotionally detached from the horror of her roommate's death -- whether or not she was involved. But as the story unfolds you can choose to believe her side or the prosecutor who seeks, successfully, to use her behavior to support his case against her.
Marcia Gay Harden plays her always supportive mom (have you ever met a TV murderer whose mom thought she was guilty?).
Whether she's actually guilty or not, Knox's story is a tragedy on several levels. Lifetime's reenactment shows that well. But the accuracy of the details has been questioned by Candace Dempsey, author of "Murder in Italy," a non-fiction book on the case, starting with Panetierre's Knox, who shows far more cleavage than the real Amanda Knox.
Dempsey, based on seeing a trailer from the TV movie, blogs that the script "is riddled with errors and crass inventions. It claims to be 'based on a true story,' not a smart legal move for Lifetime. One can only imagine what the full-length movie is like, given the fabrications in the 2-minute video."
Of course, this is a docudrama, with the emphasis on the drama.
A documentary, "Beyond the Headlines: Amanda Knox," airs at 9 p.m. The two-hour movie repeats at 8 p.m. Saturday. I haven't seen that in advance, so I can't comment on it.
Here's a scene from tonight's "Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy":
On TV: There's some good news for fans of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" from Jeff Garlin. He tweets:"The new season of Curb should start airing this summer."
- Fox will air a Howie Mandel-hosted special called "Mobbed," combining flash mobs with the old "Candid Camera" hidden-camera format on March 31.
- CNN has hired Camille Grammer, Kelsey's ex, as a "fashion and celebrity commentator" for its Oscar coverage. She was on last week's season finale of CBS' "$#*! My Dad Says."
- Tim Allen is making a sitom pilot for ABC. The Hollywood Reporter says it's had the working title of "The Last Days of Man," but is being retooled from its original idea of a man living in a world dominated by women.
- The British tabloid The Sun says that Glenn Close may play Susan Boyle in a biopic on the frumpy singer who became an international sensation.
BBC shuffling its American newscasts: While the BBC is trying to get more cable systems to pick up its 24-hour news channel, BBC World News, it's changing the news product its marketing to the U.S. audience.
It's "BBC World News America" is being cut in half, with the flagship newscast anchored by Matt Frei and Katty Kay, being made available to public TV outlets.
Currently, a BBC newscast airs on Milwaukee Public TV's Channel 36 at 7 and 10 p.m. weeknights.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
