Once upon a time, “The Six Triple Eight,” which premieres Friday on Netflix, would have been a shoo-in for a best TV movie Emmy.
It tells a little-known story about the heroic accomplishments of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Women’s Army Corps of color to serve overseas during World War II. It features a splendid performance by Kerry Washington as Maj. Charity Adams, who, after being promoted to lieutenant colonel, became the highest ranking Black woman in the U.S. Army during the war. Written and directed by Tyler Perry, it is a thoughtfully constructed period piece that offers another glimpse into how Black women, and other minority groups, are often erased from history.
Instead of competing at the Emmys, though, it is a Netflix Oscar hopeful; it debuted in select theaters on Dec. 6 before moving to the streamer two weeks later.
As the line between film and television continues to blur, the Netflix Oscar model has caused much consternation among theater owners and the film academy, which recently expanded its best picture requirements to include a seven-day run in 10 of the top 50 U.S. markets. There is certainly a practical concern — streaming has taken a bite out of an already dwindling theatrical industry, which the academy has good reason to protect — but underneath lies a more troubling and existential question: What makes a movie a “real” movie, as opposed to a “TV” movie?
I mean, beyond the subjective prestige of being nominated for an Oscar instead of an Emmy?
For example, the 2005 film “The Girl in the Cafe,” written by Richard Curtis and starring Bill Nighy, is just as good as the similarly themed 2022 film “Living,” written by Kazuo Ishugiro and also starring Nighy — the only difference being that the first premiered on HBO and won an Emmy for best TV movie, while the second opened in theaters and was nominated for two Oscars.
For decades, brilliant made-for-TV movies told stories theatrical films would not, taking on painful and/or incendiary topics including but not limited to alcoholism (“Call Me Bill W.”); domestic abuse (“The Burning Bed”); sexual abuse (“Something About Amelia”); HIV/AIDS (“An Early Frost”); and racism (“Miss Evers’ Boys”). Before there was “Schindler’s List,” there was NBC’s “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story.” Before there was “CODA,” there was Hallmark Hall of Fame’s “Love Is Never Silent.”
Like 20th Century Fox’s “Hidden Figures,” and HBO’s “Something the Lord Made,” “The Six Triple Eight” excavates a thrilling story that has been long buried, in part by the prejudice of its time. Despite our sustained fascination with WWII, the Women’s Army Corps remain an infuriatingly overlooked group in film and television. The Brits may showcase the various roles women played in the war — Bletchley decoders, WRNS, WAAFs and, of course, spies — but American screenwriters have mostly consigned the 150,000 women who served in to a bit of backstory, a romantic diversion or a joke.
Needless to say, those allowed an appearance were invariably white. But more than 6,500 women of color served in the WACs, including the 850 who made up the 6888th.
Under the command of Adams, the battalion was sent to the U.K. and then France to deal with the years-long backlog of mail between soldiers and their loved ones.
“The Six Triple Eight” is based on the experience of actual WAC Lena Derriecott Bell King, who died in January — but not before Perry was able to show her a cut of his film. Played by Ebony Obsidian, Lena joins up after her sweetheart is killed in action. Their relationship was a secret one — he was white, wealthy and Jewish — and like too many others, she heard nothing from him after he shipped out.
Her unspoken desire to follow and somehow find him provides the emotional spine of the film. But the story is about the creation of the 6888th and Adams’ (Washington) efforts to break through the racist refusals to deploy her troops in Europe.
Only the intervention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune (Susan Sarandon and Oprah Winfrey, in a badly wigged and unnecessary scene over which we will kindly draw a veil) can grant Adams’ wish, and sorting mail is not the assignment she had in mind for her rigorously trained volunteers.
But the task proves to be more daunting, and important, than Adams first thought. Soldiers and families have been cut off from each other for many months, and morale has plummeted. “No mail, low morale” becomes the women’s motto as they brave U-boats, bombs, cold weather and racist Army officers who want them to fail in their mission to sort through mountains of mislabeled, illegible and partially destroyed letters and packages.
It is a Herculean task of the sort too often overlooked in film and television, where a mound of unpeeled potatoes has become shorthand for the welter of noncombatant duties war requires — duties that were in fact fraught and even dangerous at times. Lena, and to a lesser extent Adams, have story arcs about their personal transformation, but Perry, who was inspired by an article in Smithsonian magazine, is mostly interested in recreating the war on multiple fronts that these women fought.
Against Germany, whose submarines and bombs threaten their lives, but also against racist, sexist military leaders and the women’s own internalized notions of what they are capable of doing.
It is an ambitious film, if at times heavy-handed, and though not at all holiday-themed, its focus on courage and resilience make it perfect for a holiday gathering around the electronic hearth.
Where, the lesser “prestige” of the TV movie aside, we have long enjoyed some of our most memorable films. “Brian’s Song” was a TV movie, as were “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “Sybil.” Steven Spielberg’s first professional film was “Duel,” a 1971 ABC Movie of the Week. In 1983, the nuclear holocaust film “The Day After,” also on ABC, was watched by more than 100 million people.
Decades before it was consigned to the Hallmark Channel (a platform that understands the temptations of the holiday movie), Hallmark Hall of Fame produced such classics as “The Winter of Our Discontent,” “Sarah Plain and Tall,” “The Piano Lesson” and “Promise,” which won five Emmys, two Golden Globes, a Peabody Award and a Humanitas Prize.
Sure, there were plenty of terrible made-for-TV movies, but there are plenty of terrible theatrical releases as well.
By the late 1990s, alas, broadcast networks, beset by cable offerings, began moving away from original movies. HBO became the genre’s gold standard with films including “Too Big to Fail,” “Temple Grandin,” “You Don’t Know Jack,” “Recount” and “Behind the Candelabra.” But even in its best year, HBO only produced four or five films; since 2020 that number has been halved.
This is not to say “The Six Triple Eight” shouldn’t be considered for Oscars; Netflix films have won several, and Apple TV+ took best picture with “CODA” in 2022. Which award to campaign for is the platform’s prerogative.
But more than Netflix’s other contenders this cycle, such as “Maria,” “His Three Daughters” and “Emilia Pérez,” “The Six Triple Eight” feels like it’s in conversation with the essential social history of the TV movie, and what it can do — has done — that theatrical films can’t, or won’t. (Plus, the film will be seen by far more people on personal screens than in the multiplex, including, if we’re honest, Academy voters, who have long relied as much on screeners as screenings.) With its increasingly fine original movie slate, which this year includes “Scoop,” “The Deliverance,” “Woman of the Hour,” “Joy,” and the LAX-set holiday thriller “Carry On,” as well as “The Six Triple Eight,” Netflix would be well served by challenging the decline of the TV movie and highlighting the form’s might.
Oscars are great, but so are Emmys. And a resurrection like that would be its own form of trailblazing.