‘Eleven’ revisits 1970s Texas serial killings
Created for obsessive true-crime buffs, “The Eleven” (9 p.m. and 10 p.m., A&E, TV-14) recalls unsolved serial killings from the 1970s. Beginning in 1971, 11 young girls disappeared and were found murdered in the area between Houston and Galveston. Some were last seen hitchhiking, leaving their school bus or awaiting a ride from their parents. Despite the notoriety of the crimes, no suspect was
ever tried.
Nearly a half-century later, local journalist Lise Olsen and retired police detective Fred Paige have revived the cold case and have decided to follow a peculiar lead. In the midst of the original investigation, authorities received a cryptic note from inmate Edward Harold Bell, serving time for an unrelated homicide. Filled with strange references to government conspiracies, Bell’s confessional note was dismissed at the time. Olsen and Paige believe that was a mistake.
Unfortunately for viewers, there is very little surviving contemporary news footage concerning this horrific case. The 1970s was a time when a lot of news was still shot on film; storing film canisters in this pre-digital age was expensive, as well as space- and time-consuming.
So, in addition to interviews with friends of the victims, now in their 50s and 60s, a great deal of “The Eleven” consists of re-enactments, or what the makers of this production call “cinematic dramatizations.” There’s an emphasis here on clips of lurid depictions of execution-style killings. Information about the case and its new investigation is doled out in spoonfuls in between repeated viewings of these shock-value tableaux.
One gets the sense that there’s about 15 minutes of actual exposition per hourlong episode. Look for two helpings of “The Eleven” tonight. The remaining four helpings will air at 10 p.m. on subsequent Thursday nights.
HALLOWEEN SPECIALS
ABC recycles holiday favorites of different vintages. Linus embraces an unorthodox view of Halloween in the 1966 cartoon “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” (8 p.m., TV-G). The gang hunts for one of their own amid things that go bump in the night in the 2013 CGI offering “Toy Story of Terror! (8:30 p.m., TV-G).
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin. tvguy@gmail.com.