The Trip to Bountiful

Horton Foote wrote the story of Carrie Watts for live television in 1953, and the part has since belonged to Lillian Gish, who first played it on NBC, and to Geraldine Page, who won an Oscar for the 1985 film. Cicely Tyson took it back to Broadway in 2013 and won a Tony, and a year later Lifetime turned that revival into 'The Trip to Bountiful', a TV movie with an African American cast directed by Michael Wilson, who had also staged the play.

Houston, the 1950s. Frail and with a weak heart, Mrs. Watts shares a cramped flat with her son Ludie, just back at work after two years laid up, and his wife Jessie Mae, who can't stand her singing hymns around the house and keeps a close eye on her pension cheque. All Carrie wants is to see Bountiful again, the small Texas town where she grew up, before she dies. Nobody will take her, and every attempt to go on her own has only made Jessie Mae more suspicious.

Then one day she makes it to the bus station. There she meets Thelma, a young woman whose husband has just gone off with the army, and the two share a seat and a few memories on the way to a place so small it doesn't even have its own stop. With Ludie and Jessie Mae on her trail, the journey becomes a look back over a whole life and what time has done to it.

Tyson, remembered for 'Fried Green Tomatoes' and 'The Help', and Vanessa Williams return to their Broadway roles, while Blair Underwood and Keke Palmer step in for Cuba Gooding Jr. and Condola Rashad as Ludie and Thelma. Clancy Brown plays the local sheriff. Tyson and Foote's daughter Hallie were among the producers, and Michelle Obama spoke at a screening ahead of the premiere.

It premiered on Lifetime on 8 March 2014 and went on to earn two Emmy nominations, for Outstanding Television Movie and for Tyson as lead actress, as well as a SAG nomination for her and three NAACP Image Awards, Tyson and Underwood among the winners. American critics were won over: its average across the 14 outlets collected on Movienco is 8.4 out of 10.

• Drama