Never have I seen such great talent assembled for such dreck! A guilty pleasure that's all pleasure, Jackie Collins spins nasty rumors with deft improbability to create the National Enquired version of Hollywood. All it's missing is Elvis alien love child.

Hollywood WIVES is good, fun entertainment! Coming out in 1983, at the heart and height of DYNASTY and DALLAS fame, Hollywood WIVES is a prime example of a time when miniseries used to be enjoyable and could hold your attention for 3 days! I'll bet the average viewer now couldn't stand a 3-part effort like this. No attention span anymore. Containing an eclectic mix of past, present, and future TV and movie stars, some has-beens, some never-will-bes, Emmy winners, Oscar winners, etc., etc. The list goes on and on! WIVES is perhaps the most enjoyable miniseries ever! What a cast! Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter!), Candace Bergen (MURPHY BROWN!), legendary Rod Steiger (ON THE WATERFRONT,IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT), Angie Dickinson (POLICEWOMAN herself!), Roddy McDowall (boy genius and quirky adult!), Joanna Cassidy (always there, always reliable), Stefanie Powers (HART TO HART!), Mary Crosby (Kristin from DALLAS!), Steve Forrest (DALLAS again!), Andrew Stevens (son of legendary Stella Stevens!), Robert Stack (Eliot Ness!) and none other than Suzanne Somers (CHRISSY SNOW!). In what universe does Hannibal Lecter get to get it on with Chrissy Snow! In Hollywood WIVES universe, that's where! And Hopkins and Somers make a hot duo in this one! I remember first seeing this as a kid in 1983 and totally enjoying this miniseries. It's so much fun. So many story lines. About the Hollywood film community elite (producers, directors, writers, actors, agents, etc.), WIVES weaves many tales within this 3-part soap opera. The core s/l is about a mentally deranged Illinois man (Stevens) who kills his parents after he finds out he was adopted and that his mother is some Hollywood bigshot who didn't want to be saddled with a kid at a young age. Who is it? That's the mystery. Is it Bergen, Powers, Cassidy, Dickinson, Somers? What fun! Stevens actually plays a dual role of this pyschopath and a young struggling actor named Buddy with a sexy wife. OBVIOUSLY, these 2 men are connected as Buddy later finds out that he too was adopted. Twins! Another soap opera cliché! During this core s/l, lots of other drama occurs. A new big movie is about to be cast and Steiger (the producer) needs a star. Somers (in the absolute, positive, sexiest role of her career) plays Gina Germaine and she wants to be the star. So she seduces and blackmails Hopkins (the co-writer of the film with his wife Powers) into giving her an audition. Somers and Hopkins are terrific together in this. This was way before Hopkins became a real Hollywood A-lister when TV was still good enough for him and after Somers had been dismissed from THREE'S COMPANY. I remember always wishing that this had become a TV series after this, kind of DYNASTY set in Hollywood.Other s/l include Forrest as a has-been actor trying to stay young with his wife Bergen trying to get him the lead male part in the new film. Cassidy is Bergen's best friend and Hopkins' first wife. Dickinson is a powerful agent and friend of Somers, each of which shares the scoop on current-goings-on in Hollywoodland. Crosby is the daughter of retired actor Stack and she is having affair with Forrest. Oh what a tangle web we weave...! Needless to say, all these s/l converge near the end and we actually get a kind of open-ended conclusion where you could imagine a future TV series. I actually thought that's what was going to happen. Too bad it didn't! Hollywood WIVES is fun!

Every once in a while when you sit down in front of the TV to be entertained, you don't want to have to think or analyze or correlate anything that you're watching. Sometimes you just want to put your brain on hold and watch pretty people in pretty costumes having pretty problems. If you like to indulge in mindless potboilers every now and then have your fill with the 1985 miniseries Hollywood WIVES, the trashy multi-episodic miniseries based on the equally trashy Jackie Collins novel. The story follows a select circle of Hollywood friends, acquaintances, newcomers, secretholders, adulterers and their various escapades. Now, let's see if I can remember all of this...Steve Forrest is an actor looking for a comeback and neglecting wife Candice Bergen while having an affair with Mary Crosby...producer/director Anthony Hopkins is cheating on screenwriter wife Stefanie Powers with blackmailing bimbo Suzanne Somers...Andrew Stevens and wife Catherine Mary Stewart move to Hollywood so that he can begin a career as an actor but she's the one who ends up having a career, being drafted by the studio head (Rod Steiger) who wants her for the lead in a film that Hopkins promised to Somers. When Stevens' career goes nowhere, he gets hired by Roddy McDowell to be a male escort to make ends meet. Stevens by the way, has a dual role as a psycho who comes to Hollywood to find the mother that gave him up for adoption many years ago. Those are the main story lines so if you're in the mood for some mindless eye candy, sit back and enjoy.

***SLIGHT SPOILERS*** Hollywood Wives is a good movie if you like 80s mini-series based on the works of Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins (or maybe even those silly 2 hour Danielle Steele adaptations). It isn't as good as Scruples or I'll Take Manhattan but it is better than Til We Meet Again or Malibu, about on-par with Bare Essence. The story is really unimportant, the fun thing with these movies is the cast, the costumes and the cheesy dialogue. Hollywood Wives has the costumes and cheese down, but it misses the mark a bit in casting. This is the story of Hollywood Royalty and their various bad marriages, so the people should be extra-beautiful. For the most part the women are good, but I had a hard time getting past Steve Forrest as a Movie Idol, he just isn't a very good actor and I know there are people who do, but I don't find him the least bit attractive. Especially when he walks around with his stomach sucked in and his chest puffed out wearing gold chains. *SPOILER* Andrew Stevens didn't seem quite up to his role either though he was better than Forrest (his acting as Deke was horrible in a very contrived story that was distracting because the conclusion was so obvious from the very first Deke frame). Robert Stack was a bit hard to swallow as the retired king of the great actors, but his screen time was limited so it wasn't too bad. Finally: where was Barry Bostwick? Didn't the producers of this movie know that an 80s mini-series is just not complete without Bostwick? It's like throwing a Super bowl party with no chips.