It has been almost 25 years, but those of us working in the newsroom in 1993 (I was the head of the art & graphics department) will never forget the tense 51-day standoff near Waco, Texas, between the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and David Koresh's religious community, the Branch Davidians.
The daily negotiations played out on TV almost like a reality show. It was surreal.
Those tragic events are the subject of an ambitious six-part miniseries set to debut at 9 p.m. Wednesday on the Paramount Network (formerly Spike).
Branch Davidians: peaceful religious community or dangerous, child-abusing, polygamist cult? The debate continues to this day.
The confrontation at Koresh's Mount Carmel Center began with a shootout that left four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians dead. A siege followed.
In an attempt to get Koresh to surrender, the FBI tightened the noose around the compound using sleep deprivation, including loud music, bright lights and flash-bang grenades.
On April 19, with the approval of U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, tanks punched holes in the building and inserted tear gas. A fire, whose cause is still disputed, erupted. Koresh and 75 others died -- 25 of them children -- as the inferno reduced the compound to ashes.
It was discovered that a number of the dead had been shot or stabbed to death. The federal forces fired no weapons that day.
Nine people survived the compound and some still believe that Koresh will be resurrected one day to lead them again.
Waco stars Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights, True Detective) as Koresh (real name Vernon Wayne Howell) and Melissa Benoist (Supergirl) as his only legal wife, Rachel Jones Koresh. She was considered the matriarch of the Mount Carmel compound.
Koresh purportedly had as many as 19 "wives" and fathered multiple children by different women in the group.
Also starring are John Leguizamo (John Wick), Andrea Riseborough (Bloodline), Paul Sparks (House of Cards), Shea Whigham (The Wolf of Wall Street), Camryn Manheim (The Practice), and Julia Garner (The Perks of Being a Wallflower).
The miniseries is based on news reports as well as two biographies -- A Place Called Waco, by Branch Davidian survivor David Thibodeau (played by Rory Culkin); and Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator, by Gary Noesner, played in the series by Michael Shannon.
The miniseries explores the events leading up to the standoff and is told from several perspectives of those involved in both sides of the conflict.
• More on Koresh. If you prefer documentaries over dramatization, A&E will cover the Waco tragedy with a four-hour, two-night "special event" at 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday.
Waco: Madman or Messiah is, A&E claims, "the definitive account" of the events culled from rare audio and video and 247 FBI negotiation tapes.
The special includes video from Koresh himself, as well as the nine surviving members of the Branch Davidian sect. The survivors relate how they believed Koresh was sent by God and how he prophesied, with startling accuracy, the fatal events that eventually transpired.
They also give emotional accounts of what happened after Koresh announced it was God's will that all the women in the group were to be his wives and how he separated married couples and impregnated young girls to raise the chosen race.
• We'll Meet Again With Ann Curry, debuts at 7 p.m. today on PBS and AETN. The uplifting six-episode series is "a journey of hope" and focuses on dramatic reunions between people separated by real-life events.
Episodes include a Vietnam War baby desperate to find the American father she last saw 40 years ago; the military chaplain who helped a stranger through the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; two people who survived the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980; two stories of coming out as gay before it was socially accepted; and 1960s civil rights workers reunited with those they met in the South.
Tonight's episode, "Children of WWII," deals with Reiko Nagumo, an 83-year-old Japanese-American sent to an internment camp in Wyoming as a child. She hopes to be reunited with the classmate who stood by her in the dark days of growing anti-Japanese prejudice.
Also, we learn the tale of Peter Engler, who at age 5 fled the Nazis with his parents in 1939. He searches for the family who befriended him in the last refuge open to German Jews: the Shanghai Ghetto in China.
Keep the Kleenex handy.
The series runs Tuesdays at the same time through Feb. 27.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 01/23/2018