The Big Picture
- Cillian Murphy's performance in this year's Oppenheimer has gained widespread attention and is being heralded as a heavy hitter this awards season.
- The 1980 Oppenheimer miniseries, starring Sam Waterston, is a comprehensive portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer's life and has a wider biographical scope than this year's film.
- While the miniseries can be slow-paced at times, it received critical acclaim and garnered several nominations and wins at the 1981 BAFTAs, proving its quality as a historical drama.
When you think of J. Robert Oppenheimer on the big screen, it's likely that you think of Cillian Murphy and his performance in this year's mega-hit, Oppenheimer. His performance is being circled as a heavy hitter this upcoming awards season and has finally given him the widespread attention that his massively underrated career deserves. But Murphy isn't the first actor to play the father of the atomic bomb! Plenty of others have filled his shoes in the past, and done so with critical acclaim. Until Christopher Nolan's movie hit theaters this year, if you were looking for the definitive version of Oppenheimer's life on-screen, most people would likely point you toward the Sam Waterston-starring 1980 miniseries, also titled Oppenheimer. Across seven episodes, the theoretical physicist's life is given more room to breathe than this year's epic three-hour biopic. Whether it is better or not is totally subjective, but it's undeniable that 1980's Oppenheimer casts a wider biographical net.
Whether you're a historian or you simply took part in this year's flagship "Barbenheimer" event, most people in the world know that J. Robert Oppenheimer had an eventful, complicated life. Nolan's three-hour version of his story moved like a bullet, with a fast-paced editing style to take the audience through one chapter after another. That movie seriously moves like one gigantic montage. 1980's Oppenheimer, on the other hand, has the ability to pause more than its 2023 counterpart, meaning that it could explore his eventful, complicated life without hurrying through things too quickly. By taking an episodic approach to his life, director Barry Davis and writer Peter Prince can sit and stew in these monumental moments, which also gives Sam Waterston heaps of time to work with. What resulted was a series that came to bat in many different ways at the 1981 BAFTAs, garnered critical acclaim, and by most accounts, did Oppenheimer's story justice.
Oppenheimer
Not RatedDramaBiographyHistoryBiography of the American physicist who led the U.S. effort to develop the atomic bomb during World War II, only to find himself suspected as a security risk in the 1950s.
- Release Date
- May 11, 1982
- Cast
- Sam Waterston , John Carson , Christopher Muncke , Jana Shelden
- Main Genre
- Drama
- Seasons
- 1
Telling Oppenheimer's Story In a Miniseries Gives It Plenty of Room
In the early '80s, if you wanted to tell someone's life story on screen, the road most taken was in movies. That might even mean TV movies, but full-on series... not so much. Sometimes, you come across a historical figure who has just lived too big of a life, so a 90-minute movie would leave too much out. A long-running series would obviously run out of steam though, given you only have so much material to work with in a biographical project. The miniseries format is a sweet spot though, so if you really wanted to linger in the little details of Oppenheimer's life and hit most of the big topics, then that would be the way to go.
With that in mind, we received 1980's Oppenheimer. This series from Barry Davis and Peter Prince was a huge deal when it came out, at least in a critical sense, and mostly for good reason. You can feel the goodwill in these seven episodes to tell this critical moment in history accurately. Like this year's film, there's an attempt to give the figure of Oppenheimer a three-dimensional characterization. Instead of the cold, heartless portrayal that you might expect in a show about the creator of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer and Waterston's performance provides more complexities than that. Each episode focuses on a different aspect that the recent biopic ended up intertwining. The premiere gives a lot of time to Oppy's relationship and marriage with Kitty Oppenheimer (Jana Shelden), and even shines a great light on how those around him feel about their dynamic. The following episodes cover his affair with Jean Tatlock (Kate Harper), leadership over the Manhattan Project, the aftermath of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eventual questioning and hearings later in life, and more. This series doesn't leave out a drop, and everyone in it is fantastic. You expect Waterston to be great, but everyone else brings their A-game as well.
'Oppenheimer's Pacing Can Be a Bit Too Slow at Times
Despite being a strong miniseries in many aspects, in an age when loads of made-for-TV historically-based productions were about as lively as watching paint dry, 1980's Oppenheimer doesn't stand apart too much. Because it takes the route of using seven episodes to tell Oppenheimer's life story, we end up with a series that can be pretty drab at times. The performances help elevate some of the slower stretches, but for lack of a better word, many episodes just end up boring. That's no fault of the filmmakers or actors because, by '80s biographical miniseries standards, this pretty much hits the mark. After being injected with Christopher Nolan's adrenaline shot of a masterwork, any other iteration might feel like a slog in comparison. His film runs like an action movie, the miniseries runs like a car with all four wheels blown out.
But it's only slow most of the time. As great as it is that there are episodes that cover Oppenheimer's personal life in detail, these also tend to bog the series' pacing down greatly. It should come as no surprise that the episodes that closely follow his work on the Manhattan Project and developing the atomic bomb are the most interesting. Episode 5 is the most fascinating of them all and drags the least. In it, we see the aftermath of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how it affects Oppenheimer's legacy both in the short term and long term. It's not the greatest episode of TV that you'll ever see, but if this was all we ever had and Nolan's film never happened, then episode five would do the trick.
'Oppenheimer' Was Nominated for Several Awards at the 1981 BAFTAs
After its release, the 1980 Oppenheimer miniseries was met with a boatload of BAFTA nominations, seven in total. These included Best Actor for Waterston, Best Original Music for Carl Davis (who won), Best Editing for Tariq Anwar (who also won), and Best Drama Series or Serial for Peter Goodchild and Barry Davis (surprise, they won). It was even celebrated at the 1982 Emmys and '83 Golden Globes, but didn't win anything at either event.
Even though people loved it at the time, Oppenheimer has largely been left in the past. Its pacing couldn't have necessarily helped things or its lack of A-list talent for people to dig through their filmographies and stumble across this. Now that its central figure is all the rage in pop culture (a weird phenomenon for the father of the atomic bomb to be the center of pop culture), people are likely to stumble across this miniseries, but likely won't prefer it to Nolan's film. Instead, maybe you can look at this as a fascinating companion piece. If you want a bit more time to sit in parts of 2023's movie, then you could do much worse than this. Most would prefer that to digging through a textbook, but that's up to you! Either way, there's enough to celebrate with Waterston's performance and a strong fifth episode that makes Oppenheimer a worthy watch for anyone looking to dig more into the legacy of this complicated historical figure.
Oppenheimer is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
