Well, this falls squarely into "something I probably wouldn't have watched on my own". A 1975 TV movie about syphilis and the people in Southern California who get it. However, it does star Cloris Leachman making 1970's outfits actually work.
It's easy to forget - we live in an era of media that's deeply scrubbed and sanitized. Sure, sure, we've got gritty heroes and complex moral subplots, but a movie torn from the headlines about how sleeping around on your spouse isn't just naughty, it can give you a debilitating (but treatable) disease would be considered un-airable on network TV. In an era where we had basically three networks and PBS, this was what a network decided would make for good all-purpose viewing.
And, it's surprisingly good, helped along by Leachman turning in a rock solid performance and bringing some realism to a melodrama that includes infidelity and the impact beyond our immediate group of characters. In fact, it starts far out from Leachman and works it's way back.
I don't want to oversell the movie, but there's some willingness to deal with real-life unpleasantness and leave things a bit ambiguous that could exist in today's landscape, but it's hard not to imagine it getting glossed up and the audience missing the point and turning it into a game of "who do we blame here, because everything is about winning and losing?"
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