City Confidential
(A&E, 1998-2005; 2021-present) true crime series
City Confidential strives to emulate the content and tone of scandal sheets from the 1940s and '50s for a modern audience and largely succeeds. We're aware of three episodes of this lurid true crime series that are set in Rhode Island.
The first, titled "Newport: Chaos in the Castle," aired November 24, 2003, and concerns the brouhaha over adopted son Kevin Tinney's bid for his "due share" of the Belcourt Castle estate. The episode includes lots of shots of mansions, the harbor, Fort Adams, the Casino, the New York Yacht Club, Thames Street, the White Horse Tavern, Bowen's Wharf, Cliff Walk, etcetera. At one point narrator Paul Winfield misidentifies the Newport Bridge as the Narragansett Bay Bridge. Among the talking heads enlisted to help pad out the hour are Trudy Coxe, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of the Preservation Society of Newport County; Anita Rafael, Curator of the White Horse Tavern and founder of the Newport on Foot tour company; Harle Tinney; Kevin Tinney; lawyers for both sides; and Superior Court Judge Frank Williams.
Fans of garish analogies will find a few good ones here: "Like an aging trophy wife visiting her plastic surgeon, the Preservation Society tries to stop time right down to the smallest detail"; "Like a trust fund baby partying through her inheritance, the money ran out"; "Like a debutante with a drinking problem, there's plenty of dirt lurking behind the pristine facades that line Bellevue Avenue."
A second episode concerns the disappearance and murder of Ernest, Alice, and eight-year-old Emily Brendel of Barrington on September 20, 1991. Narrator Paul Winfield, though not his usual sonorous self (he had suffered a stroke in recent months), spends most of the hour pounding home the idea that Barrington is an affluent, lily-white suburb where Things Like This Just Don't Happen. "Being better than the rest of Rhode Island is something the good people of Barrington take for granted," he slurs portentously, "though they don't like to brag about it." An interview with the owner of Imagine Gift Shop, touching on the local controversy over whether her blue fiberglass cow is a sculpture or a commercial sign, paints the town fathers as a bunch of pedantic, elitist prigs. Shots of boats, golf courses, nice houses with neatly trimmed lawns, and fit, beautiful people walking, riding, and roller blading on the bike path contribute to the continual beating of a dead horse. Rather than eliciting sympathy for the victims, the overall tone of the piece seems to be saying that, damn their eyes, those rich bastards deserved it.
Contrary to the narrative uttered over the many shots of Country and Mathewson roads, Barrington doesn't actually have any gated communities—not to mention that such a thing would be at odds with the whole nice town premise. In another sloppy detail, there's a shot of "ransom money" that features bundles of $100 bills, but the bands wrapped around the bundles are for one-dollar bills.
When the show actually gets around to telling the story of the murder, locations we're shown include the Brendel home at 51 Middle Highway, murderer Christopher Hightower's house at 1 Jones Circle, Primrose Hill School (which Emily attended), Newport Creamery, Barrington Town Hall, the Barrington Professional Building (where Ernest Brendel had an office), Brickyard Pond, Bayside Family YMCA (where Hightower picked up Emily), Brown University's Van Wickle Gates, and the Rhode Island Court House in Providence. Archival local news and police video and interviews with principal players add some much-needed authority. The show first aired on January 1, 2004.
The third episode first aired November 20, 2004. "Providence, RI: The Mayor and the Mob" covered the career of Buddy Cianci and his downfall in Operation Plunder Dome. The production company visited Providence in mid-June, collecting lots of local color, including the Providence Place Mall, Federal Hill restaurants, WaterFire, Buddy's former home at 33 Power Street, and City Hall. The show also made use of local television footage of various high (and low) points of Buddy's career, as well as interviews with persons close to the action, like Providence Journal investigative reporter Mike Stanton, Channel 12 investigative reporter Jack White, comedian (and Plunder Dome courtroom artist) Charlie Hall, WHJJ radio talk show host Arlene Violet, Cianci defense attorney Richard Egbert, the FBI's undercover witness Antonio Freitas, federal prosecutor Craig Moore, and FBI agent W. Dennis Aiken. The one person missing was Cianci, who declined to be interviewed—probably because he was in prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey, at the time, serving a five year, four month sentence for racketeering conspiracy. More importantly, he wouldn't have been allowed to wear his toupee on camera.
