Advertised as "Paul Newman's First Film for Television,"
Shadow Box was more specifically the first TV movie to be directed by Newman. Moving in a slow, deliberate fashion, the film concerns three terminally ill people. Their stories intertwine as the unfortunate spend their last days with their families in a cottage-complex hospice.
Christopher Plummer and
Joanne Woodward play a pair of ex-spouses, whose chances for reconciliation are strained somewhat by the presence of Plummer's male lover
Ben Masters.
James Broderick plays a blue-collar worker, sharing precious final moments with wife
Valerie Harper. And elderly
Sylvia Sidney comes to terms with her daughter
Melinda Dillon. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Michael Cristofer,
Shadow Box was co-produced by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's daughter Susan Kendall Newman. The Emmy-nominated drama was first telecast December 28, 1980. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide