CBS (Sun., Nov. 24, and Tues., Nov. 26, 9 p.m. ET)
C+
Truman Capote's shocking true-crime tale of the 1959 murder of the Clutters of Holcomb, Kans., is treated as a period piece in this four-hour, two-part adaptation. The colors have been muted. The barns, gas stations and local buildings have been photographed to look as flat as postcard reproductions. This ghastly tragedy, in which two stupid ex-cons bungle a robbery and leave behind four corpses, loses much of its immediacy as a result and becomes as eerily iconographic as one of those Bruce Springsteen ballads about men who can't say why but they got something bad inside. This approach might work if Eric Roberts and Anthony Edwards hadn't been miscast as the killers. Roberts is too emotionally oversize an actor to play a sorrowful little loser like Perry Smith. As Dick Hickock, Edwards squints one eye and burps up a dopey laugh.
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