History Series / Titanic1996

* DirtyCoward: Like other ''Titanic'' films, Ismay is portrayed as cowardly trying to sneak into a lifeboat in order to escape. This miniseries really hammers it in by having the other people in the lifeboat noticing and calling him a coward.

* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: The large Jack family are a thinly veiled stand-in for the Goodwins, all of whom perished in the disaster. (Oddly enough, the characters WERE named Goodwin in the original script, so the name change is a bit of a mystery.)

* ArtisticLicense: ''Far'' too many to list here. If you want to see the extensive list, [[ArtisticLicense/Titanic1996 go here]].

* HeroicBSOD: Surprisingly, averted. Captain Smith, who by many accounts became distant and indecisive upon realizing the gravity of the situation, is remarkably coherent. He criticizes Murdoch on his handling of avoiding the iceberg like someone a century later would.

A full year before Creator/JamesCameron's ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'' broke box office records, Robert Lieberman directed a TV miniseries about the [[UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic ill-fated liner]]. Boasting an AllStarCast which included Creator/CatherineZetaJones, Creator/PeterGallagher, Creator/TimCurry, and Creator/GeorgeCScott, the film was aired in two parts on Creator/{{CBS}} in November 1996.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Benjamin Guggenheim is pointed out by Mrs Foley, who notes his scandalous backstory (despite being married, he was travelling back to America with his mistress), but he is never seen again. Not even for the real Guggenheim, when he declined to wear a lifejacket and put on his best clothes, declaring that he would go down like a gentleman. Everyone else mentioned by Mrs Foley - the Astors, Molly Brown, the Strausses - at least gets some screen time.

*** On April 9th, there was a tour for the press and photographers aboard the ship.[[labelnote:*]]In fact, many of the surviving photographs of ''Titanic'''s interior were taken during this tour.[[/labelnote]] However, it was not a press conference, with reporters grilling Ismay about the lack of lifeboats.

* AllThereInTheManual: Tim Curry’s character is never formally introduced or named at any point in the minaeries. His name is stated to be “Simon Doonan” only in the original press materials by CBS.

A full year before Creator/JamesCameron's ''Film/{{Titanic|1997}}'' broke box office records, Robert Lieberman directed a TV miniseries about the [[UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic ill-fated liner]]. Boasting an AllStarCast which included Creator/CatherineZetaJones, Peter Gallagher, Creator/TimCurry, and Creator/GeorgeCScott, the film was aired in two parts on Creator/{{CBS}} in November 1996.

* AgeLift: Loraine Allison was a two year old toddler at the time of the sinking, but in the miniseries she's portrayed as a bratty seven year old.

* BrattyHalfPint: Loraine Allison is portrayed as an insufferable, loud, and {{spoiled brat}}. Presumably so the audience wouldn't get too attached to her once the final scenes of episode two roll around.

[[caption-width-right:340:[[ArtisticLicenseHistory Even the poster is wrong.]][[labelnote:*]]No, the ''Titanic'' did not go down in flames.[[/labelnote]]]]

* ScreenShake: Everyone throws themselves against something when ''Titanic'' hits the iceberg, even though the impact was barely felt as anything more than a slight shudder through most of the ship.

* GenderLift: John Jacob Astor had two children from his previous marriage, an adult son and a preadolescent daughter. When Madeleine Astor is seen being picked up by them in New York after being rescued, both of John's children are shown to be men.

* WouldHurtAChild: Miss Miller recognizes Alice Cleaver as a woman who murdered her baby several years prior.

* WouldAHurtAChild: Miss Miller recognizes Alice Cleaver as a woman who murdered her baby several years prior.

* DarkerAndEdgier: This miniseries somewhat stands apart from other dramatizations of the ''Titanic'' disaster due to its inclusion of sexual violence and themes of mental illness and infanticide.

* DatedHistory: Alice Cleaver being portrayed as a child murderer. In defense of the miniseries, it was widely believed in the early 90s, during the resurgence of interest in ''Titanic'', that Alice was indeed a convicted murderer. At least two books even accepted this as fact, including Don Lynch and Ken Marschall's otherwise exhaustive ''Titanic: An Illustrated History''. Only in recent years it was confirmed that the woman who murdered her baby in 1909 was Alice ''Mary'' Cleaver, completely unrelated to Alice ''Catherine'' Cleaver, the Allison family nurse.

* HopeSpot: The film likes to play up the close proximity between the ''Titanic'' and ''Californian'' as this. One of the ''Californian''’s Officers offers to listen in on the ''Titanic''’s wireless traffic for a while, but the power runs out just as the distress signal is being sent. Later, they try to signal each other via Morse lamp, but the crew is either too stupid or too tired to think about turning the wireless back on to communicate directly.

* GenderLift: John Jacob Astor had two adult children from his previous marriage, a son and a daughter. When Madeleine Astor is seen being picked up by them in New York after being rescued, both of John's children are shown to be men.

* AdultFear: A madwoman who murdered her own child in the past has run off with your baby while you and your family are in the middle of one of the deadliest shipwrecks in history.
** The Jack family spend hours navigating the bowels of the ship, through endless companionways and locked gates to get to the boat deck, only to find that all the lifeboats have been launched and now they, and their children, have minutes left to live.

** A rather strange minor example with Loraine Allison. Instead of showing her as an innocent two year old toddler, she is portrayed as a rude and nasty spoiled brat.

* AdultFear: A madwoman who murdered her own child in the past has run off with your baby while your family are in the middle of one of the deadliest shipwrecks in history.

* DramaticShattering: Part One of the movie ends shortly after the collision with a unattended glass sliding out of the frame and onto the deck.

* DutchAngle: The sinking is done in near-total Dutch angles, trying to show the sinking without moving the sets. It gets a bit comical when actors are trying to be off-balance when they're on level ground, not to mention it's used soon after the collision (when the tilt was not apparent yet), with along with varying between scenes and even giving the impression that the ship is heavily listing (beyond what was reported).

** He also gets a small HistoricalHeroUpgrade. One scene has him berating officers for lowering boats half-full and demands that they be filled, even though this was something that Thomas Andrews did. He's also depicted suggesting that Isidor Straus join his wife in a lifeboat, as no one would object to an elderly gentleman having a seat (though it was one of the officers who actually said this.)

*** Phillips did communciate with the wireless operator on the ''Californian'', Cyril Evans, shortly before the collision. Evans was relaying to ''Titanic'' that his own ship had stopped for the night due to ice, but Phillips was trying to clear a huge backlog of messages for Cape Race and angrily told him to "shut up" and "keep out". With that, Evans [[MissedHimByThatMuch shut off his wireless and went to bed]].

* YouAreTooLate: Captain Rostron and the ''Carpathia'' were among the [[BigDamnHeroes heroes of the night]], but they arrived too late to help 1500 of the 2200 aboard ''Titanic''.