King Kaufman's Sports Daily

"The Bronx Is Burning": Eight-part soaper/cop show about the '77 Yankees and the Son of Sam is a big step forward for ESPN.

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July 3, 2007 | ESPN's entertainment division will take a step up in class next week with the debut of the four-letter's first miniseries, "The Bronx Is Burning," an eight-hour drama about the 1977 New York Yankees set against the backdrop of that hot, dark Gotham summer.

That was the summer when Son of Sam, then known as the .44-Caliber Killer, terrorized the city and Ed Koch emerged from a contentious mayoral race. There was a heatwave, a blackout and widespread looting.

Based on rough cuts of the first three episodes, it's a good show, though I think it fails in its attempt to portray the Yankees' internal soap opera as somehow being an integral part of the larger, chaotic story of that summer in New York, or even vice versa.

The Yankees as a baseball team, seen from the outside, defending an American League pennant and trying to take that last step back to the top, with Billy Martin managing, newly signed Reggie Jackson in right field and George Steinbrenner lording over the enterprise: That was a huge part of what Spike Lee's movie called the summer of Sam.

But how Jackson got along with his teammates in the wake of the famous, disastrous Sport magazine interview in which he called himself "the straw that stirs the drink," or the Martin-Steinbrenner psychodrama, those things could have been happening in any clubhouse, anywhere, and at any time. Billy Martin didn't need David Berkowitz prowling the Outer Boroughs to have dark days.

The series is based on a book by Jonathan Mahler, which I haven't read. Perhaps the book does a better job of portraying the Yankees as, in the words of one of the actors in a companion documentary, a metaphor for what was happening in the city.

Still, "The Bronx Is Burning" is a vast improvement over the mostly wan, often sentimental offerings that ESPN's entertainment division has made since debuting with "A Season on the Brink" five years ago. It's the best drama the network has done since "Playmakers," its entertaining soap opera series about a fictional pro football team that the network yanked off the air because the NFL didn't like it.

When "The Bronx Is Burning" focuses on the Yankees, which is most of the time, it looks a lot like "Playmakers." It's a locker-room soaper, but it's a good one, centered on three characters who are so compelling that they might not be believable if they weren't real people: Steinbrenner, Jackson and Martin. The Yankees as a team are another principal figure, personified by their heart and soul, catcher and captain Thurman Munson.

Next page: John Turturro's uncanny Billy Martin. Plus: A farewell