Blog / January 2012 / Weekend TV: Perry guns for 'Justice,' Hoffman tries his 'Luck'

Jan 27, 201210:29 AMThe Telegraph

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Weekend TV: Perry guns for 'Justice,' Hoffman tries his 'Luck'

Talk about horsing around: This weekend, Luke Perry will be back in the saddle – again – while Dustin Hoffman will be playing the ponies. And it’s all for your viewing pleasure.

Perry returns as frontier circuit judge John Goodnight in Goodnight for Justice: The Measure of a Man, the highly anticipated made-for-cable Western set to air at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT Saturday (with an instant rerun at 10/9) on the Hallmark Movie Channel. How highly anticipated? Well, consider this: When the original Goodnight for Justice aired a year ago, it scored the highest rating for any film ever shown on the Hallmark Movie Channel. Indeed, audience response was so enthusiastic that Hallmark signed up Perry for not just one but two sequels.

“In the first one, The Measure of a Man,” Perry recently told Cowboys & Indians, “the judge runs into a lady who seems to think that they might have had a child together at one time. And in the absence of any CSI-style science that we have today -- who can be sure?”

Trouble is, the boy is something of a problem child, if not a budding outlaw. It’s up to John Goodnight to nudge him back onto the straight and narrow path, when the judge isn’t busy dealing with a dangerous masked outlaw and his gang of bandits.

If you missed the first Goodnight for Justice, don’t fret: Hallmark will rerun the original flick at 6 p.m. ET/5 p.m. CT Saturday, so you can get acquainted with the judge before sampling his latest exploits. Goodnight for Justice: Queen of Hearts, the second sequel, will premiere late this year.

Meanwhile, over at HBO, Deadwood creator and producer David Milch has joined forces with moviemaker (and Miami Vice executive producer) Michael Mann for Luck, a limited-run series set against the backdrop of professional horse racing.

The premiere episode, which airs at 9 p.m. ET/8 p.m. CT Sunday, introduces Dustin Hoffman as Chester “Ace” Bernstein, a former high-roller who recently completed a three-year jail term. With a little help from Gus Economou (Dennis Farina), his driver and bodyguard, Ace hopes to exploit his secret ownership of a $2-million Irish Thoroughbred in a complex plan to bring casino gambling to the Santa Anita racetrack in Southern California.

The pilot “is about a bunch of intersecting lives,” says Milch, noting that the cast also includes Oscar nominee Nick Nolte as a trainer-turned-owner with a shady past, Jill Hennessy (of Law & Order and Crossing Jordan fame) as a blunt-spoken veterinarian and Michael Gambon (of the Harry Potter franchise) as a transplated British gangster. But, of course, it’s also about horse racing – a subject that Milch, who has owned and raced several Thoroughbreds, knows quite a bit about.

“It's a subject,” Milch told the showbiz trade paper Variety, “which has engaged and some might say has compelled me for 50 years. I've joked that if I just can make $25 million on this show, I'll be even on research expenses. I find it as complicated and engaging a special world as any I've ever encountered, not only in what happens in the clubhouse and the grandstand, but also on the backside of the track, where the training is done and where they house the horses.”

We plan to watch each episode of Luck over the next several weeks. And you can bet that we’ll offering morning-after recaps every Monday right here on the C&I Telegraph.