This plot is very likely to end in a Karmic Death for the Evil Man. Rape as Drama may be involved or merely threatened. A woman suffers from Domestic Abuse, Parental Incest, or has a Stalker with a Crush or psycho ex-boyfriend.
The four basic plots of the Lifetime Movie of the Week can be summarized as follows: As the other networks began to move away from TV movies, Lifetime became the home of the subgenre, adopting the other networks' movies and the theatrical films and airing them frequently, to the point that "Lifetime movie" is now a generic description (Indeed, only two of the movies in the page image above were actually produced for Lifetime). The result was a whole slew of ripe Melodrama movies loaded with familiar TV faces, including the immortal Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?, starring Tori Spelling.
Meanwhile, The '90s also saw NBC revamp their Monday Night at the Movies series to appeal more to young women. Its success pushed them to make more movies. Lifetime itself got into the business with the 1990 movie Memories of Murder, starring Nancy Allen as a victim of Easy Amnesia who gets stalked by a deranged man.
Hollywood even got into the act with films like Not Without My Daughter and Sleeping with the Enemy. Starting in The '80s, the major US networks added stories in this fashion to their Made-for-TV Movie lineups, and saw them get phenomenal ratings.
Original movies are such a bedrock for the Lifetime brand that it has a spinoff network devoted entirely to them (LMN).ĭespite being the Trope Namer and Trope Codifier, Lifetime didn't invent the genre. The Trope Namer is Lifetime, a cable TV channel in the United States with programming geared toward female audiences (or, at least, female audiences who conform to Lifetime's conception of its target demographic), which is well known for giving rise to the subgenre. A genre of Made for TV Movies, also known as "Women in Jeopardy," that feature similar plots and thematic elements - mainly aggrieved women and their struggles to find empowerment of one sort or another.