On Wings of Eagles1986

     This series was adapted for television from a best-selling book by Ken Follett.  The Shah of Iran is forced out of the country and the Ayatollah Khomeini has taken over leading Iran in 1979.  During this time the pro-Khomeini forces overran the US Embassy.  Texas based Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has been working in Iran.  Two of the executives are arrested in Tehran and held in prison for $13,000,000 ransom on false charges.  The rest of the employees and their families have returned home to the United States.  The families of the two executives have also returned to Texas.  H. Ross Perot is the head of this company.  He tries diplomatic approaches to get the two men released.  That has failed and his next path is to hire retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Arthur E. ‘Bull’ Simons.  One of the major problems in getting the two prisoners released is that Iran is overrun with angry mobs.

     According to the Chicago Tribune in an article by William Gaines and Mike Dorning from July 9, 1992, this series is over dramatized and some sequences are a myth?  Supposedly, Ross Perot recruited author Ken Follett to write a thriller about the rescue.  He also retained authority over script approval for the TV series.  EDS started working in Iran in late 1974 when Middle Eastern countries were spending oil wealth to modernize.  It is included in the series that the people of Tehran stormed the prison, shot the guards and released all the prisoners.   Perot claims an Iranian EDS employee convinced revolutionaries to storm the Shah’s prison?  The EDS executives were jailed by the government of the Shah and not by the Ayatollah.  The series doesn’t state that there were complaints about EDS performance and charges of corruption linked to the computer company’s partnership with Abolfath Mahvi.  He was the middleman between EDS and the government of Iran.  It was widely reported that Abolfath was a bag-man for the Shah?  It seems there are two versions of this story?   Viewers will need to choose what they believe?  Are the scenes in the series true and the details reported by the Tribune true??  Perot was running for president and that may have tainted his truth?  3 1/2* (I liked this series) 

  

5 hours (241 min), Drama, TV Mini-Series directed by Andrew V. MacLaglen with Burt Lancaster, Richard Crenna, Paul Le Mat, Jim Metzler, James Sutorius, Louis Giambalvo, Robert Wightman, William Bumiller, Cyril O’Reilly, Lawrence Pressman, Alan Fudge, John Doolittle, Karen Carlson, Diane Salinger, Bob Delegall, Patrick Collins, Martin Doyle.

Note:  Imdb 6.4 out of 10, Amazon 4* out of 5* with 50 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in Toluca, Estado de Mexico and Mexico City, Mexico.  Originally shown on NBC in two parts on May 18 and 19, 1986 and also titled Teheran.  There is another film with the same title from 2017.  Nominated for Outstanding Miniseries at the 38^th Primetime Emmy Awards.