Sam Found Out: A Triple Play (1988) ABC Television

I'm starting a thread because there doesn't seem to be another where it could logically go. It was a really ambitious example of commercial television going out on a limb and producing a compilation of short original dramas, essentially an elaboration of an improvisational theater exercise where playwrights take a common topic, name or phrase, each taking it in a different direction. The project enlisted some of the theater luminaries of the day, Lanford Wilson, Terrence McNally, Wendy Wasserstein and John Kander and Fred Ebb, to write three segments, each using the sentence "Sam found out." as their starting point. It might have made more sense on HBO, but for ABC it was definitely a stretch to feature something like this in prime time. To my knowledge there hasn't been a home video or DVD release, which is a shame, but it's recently shown up on YouTube, that increasingly valuable archive of popular culture. Liza Minnelli was the star who featured in all three, along with co-stars Ryan O'Neal, Louis Gossett Jr. and John Rubenstein, each taking the lead in turn. I'm going to post it as an example of what I consider to be an important project; I won't say it was the greatest, but it was a rare instance of commercial theater and commercial television coming together and it deserves to be remembered. It begins with the show-biz Liza whom everyone would recognize, presumably to ease an audience into what they were about to see. It's the full show with commercials, so longish, so you can watch what you feel like watching. Sam Found Out : A Triple Play (1988) ABC TV.