Sarah, Plain and Tall: Winter's End [VHS]
The third and final episode of theSarah, Plain and Tallseries is a 1999 production reuniting stars Glenn Close and Christopher Walken with  original director Glenn Jordan. Taking the story eight years beyond the  original tale,Winter's Endis set in a harsh Kansas winter of 1918, with the specter of death everywhere: soldiers are dying overseas during  World War I, influenza is at epidemic proportions in the U.S., and an old man  has returned to the Witting farm with an uncertain reception. He's John  Witting (Jack Palance), father of Jacob (Walken), and the two men have not  seen each other since John abandoned his son years ago. Reconciliation comes  hard, punctuated by cliffhanger disasters (Jacob breaks his leg and burns  with a fever, Sarah almost dies in a heavy snowstorm), but this most brutal of trial periods for the Wittings still invites a viewer to yearn for a more  innocent--perhaps mythical--time in America. A worthy and rewarding finish to  a trilogy fit for families yet sophisticated enough for all ages,Winter's Endmay be one of the last network television classics in an era of audience relocation to multichannel cable.--Tom Keogh