After Mayberry, producers plugged Andy Griffith back into a sheriff's role & transplanted him to the high country of N. California. The town (Eagle Lake) is a ski resort, where Nick Nolte, a year or so shy of his big break in "Rich Man, Poor Man," is an instructor. A sudden string of homicides has the town fathers eager for a resolution before the tourist season begins (a theme used a year later in the theatrical "Jaws").
TV movies were becoming the forum for the changing morality & formerly taboo topics (the sheriff has a live-in girl friend; the plot revolves around the locals that aided in a young woman's abortion), even moreso than theatrical flicks, & "Winter Kill" is a fine crucible of the kinds of things the networks were peddling in prime time back then. There @Eagle Lake, the adulterers probably outnumber the tourists.
Movie features a slew of familiar TV faces of the time: John Larch, Eugene Roche, Charles Tyner. Occasionally rebroadcast on TNT, altho it might be more @home on Lifetime. Some good suspense; definitely not for children.
