Military TV, Television - Military Times

Selleck’s role a relic as networks abandon TV movies

At times, Tom Selleck must feel like the neighborhood shoemaker or typewriter repairman.

They all have crafts that have started to fade away.

In Selleck’s case, that involves making TV movies for a network. “Jesse Stone: Sea Change,” a deeply layered crime tale, is the latest example.

TV movies? At one point the networks combined for eight of them a week. Now they don’t have eight a season.

CBS stuck with it the longest, trying an offbeat mixture. “We were in there with ‘Spring Break Shark Attack’ and ‘Locusts,”’ Selleck says.

Now he’s alone. This season, CBS airs three “Hallmark Hall of Fame” films and Selleck’s movie; it has no regular night for films, so it is tentatively putting “Sea Change” into Tuesday, May 22, against the final “American Idol” showdown.

By “Idol” standards, “Sea Change” doesn’t have much flash and noise. “In a character driven piece, we can’t count on a lot of special effects and graphics and explosions,” Selleck says.

Instead, it turns to what a TV movie does best — telling a self-contained story that has some of the depth of a novel.

In this case, the novelist is Robert B. Parker, best known for creating the Boston detective named Spenser. Selleck had once been ready to do a Spenser tale for movie theaters.

“The picture fell through,” he says. Robert Urich and Joe Mantegna then played Spenser in TV movies and a series.

Selleck’s next chance came when Parker started writing Jesse Stone novels.

Stone was once a good Los Angeles cop, but his marriage ended, and he began drinking heavily. He retreated to a new life, a continent away, as police chief in a waterfront Massachusetts town called Paradise.

That’s where he is in this fourth Stone film. He’s still seeing his psychiatrist (William Devane); he’s still trying to phone his wife each night.

And he’s still drinking.

“The fact that he’s trying to stop makes you root for him,” Selleck says. “I really like playing this guy.”

Along with that are the crime cases: There’s a new one involving the rich boaters; there’s a cold-case one involving a bank shooting.

These are sort of like the stories in TV episodes but they don’t feel that way. “Why does everything have to look like a TV show?” Selleck asks.

So he picked a director who can make it look more like a movie.

The 2004 cable film “Ike” had Selleck drawing praise as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. Robert Harmon directed.

“He was so good at that and had such a good visual sense,” Selleck says.

So Selleck keeps working with him. Harmon has directed all four Jesse Stone films.

They are shot in Canada with a few familiar actors thrown in. This one has brief bits for Kathy Baker and Sean Young.

And it has a lot of Selleck being pensive.

“It’s a visual medium,” Selleck says. “The script might say, ’Jesse thinks about drinking.”’

He and Harmon have to make that interesting without being overwhelming.

“Jesse has some very dark moments,” Selleck says. “(But) he has a sense of irony about himself.”

On the tube

- What: “Jesse Stone: Sea Change”

- When: Tentatively set for 9-11 p.m. Tuesday, May 22.

- Where: CBS

- Did you know? Working on the film kept Tom Selleck from another goal — seeing the Detroit Tigers in last year’s World Series. Selleck has spent most of his life in California, but he was born in Detroit and kept his dad’s passion for the Tigers — something he later shared with his “Magnum, P.I.” character.