I just got done watching a couple segments from the old Arts & Entertainment series: Anne Beattie's "A Vintage Thunderbird" and Flannery O'Connor's "The River". Both were very good low-budget productions, spare but not poverty-stricken, and redolent of the no-nonsense attitude that seemed a holdover from the early-mid 70s (which may have been when they were made; didn't notice a copyright on my ancient LP off-air tape). These were my favorite writers at the time and the reason I taped them to the exclusion of other episodes, but watching them now I'm wishing I hadn't been so conservative and had recorded them all. Googling the series title yields very little, so I'm wondering what memories others here might have -- what stood out for them, what budding careers began there, what authors you might have discovered. Also -- I don't watch much TV anymore; can anyone say if they ever show such stuff these days, or on any other venue like PBS?

Sorry, I don't have the answers to your specific questions, but your thread piqued my interest, as I had been thoroughly unaware of "The River" ever having been adapted for the screen -- large or small. Can you provide any details regarding cast, director, producer, film or video, etc. ? I do recall an excellent TV adaptation of O'Connor's "The Displaced Person," starring John Houseman (in the title role), Shirley Stoler, and a young and still unknown Samuel L. Jackson. I believe it dates from roughly the same period, and I seem to recall it was produced for PBS, though I can't recall into which series it was incorporated. I assume that this one didn't air as part of the A&E series, or you probably would have taped it too.

I can't believe A&E used to waste their time on this junk when they could have been airing reality series about white-trash bounty hunters and mob families.

Anyway...

Yeah, I remember Short Stories and have occasionally thought about it wistfully over the past few years while passing by enormous billboards for A&E in its current incarnation. To my chagrin, I never really watched it very much - I was middle school and high school age during the years it existed, and some of it was probably over my head or outside my attention span. But I vividly recall one gripping short film I saw there in the late '80s that struck me as a lot like FATAL ATTRACTION.

Found out later it was indeed James Darden's short film "Diversion," which was later distorted into the blockbuster that birthed a thousand bunny jokes.

David, here's what I know about "The River". (I take it you're an O'Connor reader?) It was "adapted for film", directed, produced and edited by Barbara Noble. For some reason, whenever I try the name on imdb I get sent into some outer circle of Internet limbo; allmovie.com knows nothing about her either. On closer inspection, I see that it was filmed in 1976, under the auspices of the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies; associate producers were Sam and Tess Noble, whom I take to be Barbara's parents. I think I recognize makeup person Frances Alves' name, and "additional photography" is credited to Jacques Haitkin, who did some work for Roger Corman in the 80s-90s. There are some notables also in the Special Thanks, including Amy Heckerling (before she was Amy Heckerling), Jan Kadar, and Edward Anhalt.

I was lucky enough to find a VHS of "Displaced Person" in a rental-store selloff bin many years ago, and was surprised to see young Samuel Jackson there. That tape is inaccessible at the moment, but I do seem to remember PBS being mentioned somewhere on the box.

The relative quietude on the subject of A&E Short Stories in general here tells me that it must have passed pretty much unnoticed, which I would call a darn shame if I wasn't part of the reason, apparently, the station is now reduced to showing some of the stuff Michael describes. I guess it was marriage and family that distracted me in particular, but there you go.