There was an era in television prior to the expansion of cable and genre channels when many of us did not in fact even have cable. My mother to this day does not have it.
The era of the “mini-series”, and the special “network movie” some of them were bloated and silly but typically when a network ran one nobody wanted to compete and they became inevitable cultural bonding experiences.
One of my favorites was “V” an alien invasion movie. Alien invasion movies always go two ways: either they really are peaceful and humanity reacts in a bloodthirsty manner full of paranoia and suspicion and painfully holds up a mirror to itself or the aliens really do want to eat us, enslave us, or steal stuff.
So I decided I would once again watch “V” just for the heck of it. Spaceships come to earth with beings, there is initial apprehension followed by relief when the aliens look like humans and ask for help to assist their dying planet. All they want are some silly chemicals and they explain that their environmental situation is more dire than ours an interesting hat tip given that during the Reagan era people were claiming that trees caused pollution. Everybody kinda likes the aliens since they also promise to share their knowledge and they are quite polite.