Fergus Salder Once again i ventured into the world of Mrs Madrigal's 'Family' and for the first time during my time in this brave new world, i felt burnt.FTOTC benefits from the return of Dukakis, Linney and Hopkins as Mrs Madrigal, Mary Ann Singleton and Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver. This time it is 1981 and all of the characters have grown and not all for the better, the descent of Mouse into a typical gay stereotype is a disturbing fact, and seeing this former hopeless romantic flit from one meaningless sexual encounter to another is a disturbing thing to see. However Hopkins manages to show how destructive this behaviour is to Mouse and how with the the support of friends manages to regain his romantic heart.Linney has the most work with Mary Ann, as she out of all the characters has changed the most. Now with aspirations to become a hard hitting journalist she has to show strength and guts that she would never have dreamt of before in order to obtain her dreams. As Linney is one of the best working actresses of the last 10 years she manages to do all this without breaking a sweat, she even manages to make her relationship with Brian believable, which given his history and Mary Ann's is something g very difficult to do.The ever reliable Dukakis plays Anna Madrigal with her trademark spectacular heart but feel's sidelined in all the adventure.However the thing that lets this particular instalment down is giving too much focus and screen time on DeDe Halcyon Day, who despite going on a horrendous journey with her children in south America remains to be infuriatingly unsympathetic and irritating.The story here is unfortunately over the top, however it is the same in the book, and we should all be grateful that Mona has moved to save us all from Nina Siemaszko (who i have seen being wonderful in many other things) bringing her drab and unforgiving performance from MTOTC back to plague us all.Unfotunatly it is obvious that Tales of the City has suffered the same fate as many other series and movie franchises and gotten weaker with each instalment, and is now a shadow of its former self. I should state that inferior as it is to the original it is still far better than most things currently on TV.

domino1003 "Further Tales Of The City" is much darker than the first 2 installments of the series. It is the early 1980's, and Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney) is now a television personality, and is romantically involved with Brian Hawkins (Whip Hubley). One day, Mary Ann gets a call from Mrs. Halcyon, widow of her old boss. It seems that DeDe (Barbara Garrick) was presumed dead when she and D'ororthea moved to Guyana...with Jim Jones, the mad prophet of The People's Temple, in which nearly 1,000 followers killed themselves or were murdered. However, DeDe is very much alive and in fear of her life: she believes that Jim Jones is not dead, and that he is after her twin children). Knowing that this is the story that could advance her career, Mary Ann works with DeDe to solve this mystery. Meanwhile, newly divorced Prue Giroux (Mary Kay Place)meets the mysterious Luke Henry Czerny)in Golden Gate Park, and falls in love with him, not knowing the connection between Luke and DeDe. Meanwhile, Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis)is keeping Mother Mucca (Jackie Burroughs) company and keeping a nosy news reporter (Sandra Oh)from revealing the info about DeDe and Mary Ann.This is not as good as the first 2 of the series, and there is a lot of moments that can bring you down (One of the characters has signs that he has AIDS, which was just being discovered at the time). And the "Jim Jones isn't dead" storyline is an interesting nod to conspiracy theorists out there. Still, it is a good entry in the series.

Mort & Spunky the awesome cat Another enjoyable installment, from Mr Maupin, about normal fun people who do find themselves tangled in many webs.For anyone to whom the pacing seems a bit odd. Please remember that this was originally written for a newspaper. Each installment had to move quickly and leave the reader interested. It's good to see that Showtime has remained true to the articles (which were turned into books) again.

lynchnut-2 Being a huge fan of Mr. Maupin's previous two series as well as the books, I knew there was no need to worry about being disappointed...once again the "Gang" delivers...Pierre Gang, that is; he also directed "More Tales" a few years back and returns to helm this installment as well. The primary cast is back, however, noticeably absent is Mona Ramsey, who's gone off to Seattle, presumably to find herself. Laura Linney once again dives in displaying "further" sides (not to mention views) of Mary Ann. In fact, that can pretty much be said about every character this time around. Everyone gets to explore sides of themselves that before went untouched. And that's as it should be, considering "Further" picks up four years after "More" as opposed to the few month gap between the first two series. It's 1981 and the feel of the seventies is dwindling, making room for the "me" decade to come. For this writer, one of the coolest aspects was the return of Mary Kay Place to the role of Prue Giroux, which she originated in a mere couple of scenes in the first "Tales" back in '92. This time around she is a main character with some very real problems, most of which center around a peculiar man named Luke, whom she finds living in the park. Luke, as played by Henry Czerny, is the character you will be hard pressed to forget. Olympia, as always, gives just the right balance necessary to keep everyone else in line. Bruce McCulloch (Kids in the Hall) is a riot as Father Paddy. Joel Grey shows up in a role that (if one didn't know better) seems tailor-made. Barbara Garrick goes round three with a new and improved DeDe; she gets my vote as the most underrated character and actress of the saga. Armistead Maupin has always said that his primary influence when writing is Alfred Hitchcock - as you view, you'll see why he says that. As usual, the stories and characters overlap one another, going seemingly unnoticed by the participants. Maupin himself gives perhaps his most clever Hitchcockian cameo yet (big laugh).My only complaint is that the we're treated to less screentime with this series. It's about a third shorter than the previous two. As I haven't read the book in some time, I don't know what had to be sacrificed to make this possible. One of the great strengths of the first two series was the near seamless adaptations of the books upon which they were based. Was it a budgetary decision? Or just simple storytelling? It does indeed move faster than the last series. In any case, some "Tales" are better than no "Tales". Let's hope they do the next three as well.