TIME has chronicled the cultural phenomenon of television's mini-series from their beginnings ten years ago with The Blue Knight, a four-hour police drama. Since then, through Roots (1977), Holocaust (1978) and Shogun (1980), the magazine has noted the miniseries' steady escalation in length, sophistication and cost, culminating in ABC's The Winds of War, this week's cover story. "Everything about this show was big, including the number of people who worked on it," comments Los Angeles Correspondent Denise Worrell of the 18-hr. TV epic that is based on Herman Wouk's 1971 bestseller. "I caught Producer-Director Dan Curtis on the Paramount lot, working on the last Winds of War episode. I drove to Montecito, a suburb south of Santa Barbara, to talk with Robert Mitchum, a gifted storyteller who answers almost every question with an anecdote. I interviewed about 20 people connected with the program: Jan-Michael Vincent at his favorite Malibu hangout, Ali MacGraw at a Los Angeles hotel, John Houseman at a shooting of The Paper Chase. At the end of it all, I felt I'd been involved in a mini-epic of my own."

Meanwhile, Staff Writer Richard Stengel and Reporter-Researcher Elaine Dutka traveled to Virginia's hunt country to talk with Author Wouk about his TV script. It was the first interview he had given in eleven years. "Wouk is a dedicated, disciplined man and guards his time jealously," says Stengel, "but he was genial and straightforward about sharing his experiences." Adds Dutka: "He seemed to enjoy this break from the solitude of his typewriter. The two hours he had originally agreed to stretched into three." As he began supervising the cover package in New York, Senior Editor Christopher Porterfield, once a television producer himself, screened a large portion of The Winds of War and assessed the context in which it was made. Says Porterfield: "Behind this epic show is an epic competition among the networks for a shrinking share of the audience." Associate Editor Richard Corliss's story analyzes that competition and explores where television is headed. Contributing to that industry story was Reporter-Researcher Peter Ainslie, who interviewed network, cable and advertising executives. "Network television faces threatening competition," Ainslie concludes, "but few people I talked to expect it to shrivel up and disappear." On the contrary, says Senior Writer Gerald Clarke, a frequent television reviewer, who wrote the main story: "The mini-series is what television should be producing, and despite its flaws, The Winds of War is absorbing, serious entertainment." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.