La vita segreta di mio padre

Melissa Gilbert gets the shock of her life in Thicker Than Water after her father dies. She's a high powered attorney at one of Los Angeles's best white shoe law firms and just getting used to the idea that both of her parents are now deceased. Then the family friend Nan Martin drops an envelope on her with the news that her father had a wife before he married Mom. The first wife was a trick rider Rodeo Queen. As her father was a most conservative sort, that's something she can't figure.

She goes in search of wife one and finds a graveyard with another daughter mourning her passing. The daughter is Lindsay Wagner and the half sisters after a bit of getting used to bond quite well.

In fact a lawyer who is a sister of any kind comes in quite handy for Wagner who is having a dispute with her neighbor and landlord Granger Hines about water rights and the fact that Lindsay is caring for some wild horses still roaming the range. And there's romance for Gilbert in the person of veterinarian Brian Wimmer.

Thicker Than Water is a nice Hallmark Channel production with good roles for both Wagner and Gilbert. I'm sure that is one of the reasons they signed for this film. It's an easy to take film with people you will grow to care about.

Hallmark movies tend to be a standard format of the successful city business woman comes to the country on some quest and finds love there. This movie is no different but it wraps into it a standard western theme where a trouble making robber baron wants the water and the land. As that it is a Hallmark movie, it has the tension but not the violence of the western. As I am a cowgirl, if adopted by the ranch, I found a lot of things I could identify with and items that made me comfortable as it was the kind of life I have now. One thing about the movie to me is that aside from Lindsay Wagner, I do not know the cast from their former performances so I had no expectation to "who they were before". "Meeting them for the first time", I had no doubt to who they were playing. A good movie to end the day with.

My wife and I have watched Thicker Than Water starring Melissa Gilbert several times and we enjoy the movie. It's got an interesting and rather unusual plot about two half sisters that find each other, each living in quite different spheres. One sister is a lawyer in LA and the other a rancher who honours her mother's memory by taking care of mustangs. Both women share a father who led a secretive past.

One thing we like about this movie is that it is clean. There isn't one cuss word in it.

The scenery is exceptionally beautiful.

It is a touching movie which one discovers as the movie unfolds.

We would highly recommend it for family viewing.

A career woman finds her roots in the country while finding out about her fathers hidden life.

This is a nice movie about family matters. Nothing upsetting, just your familiar Hallmark kind of TV movie.

Quite a nice movie for a relaxed evening in front of the TV. Don't expect to be totally captured though.

It is also nice to see the pictures from the country-side, and the movie makes a good advertisement for country life, to inspire us hard-working town dwellers.

A romantic touch finishes off the movie well.

Melissa Gilbert is an excellent choice for this kind of movies.

Just sweet.

For those of us who have walked in the shoes of marginalization or separation from blood kin due to parental decisions to keep secrets, this movie provided a warm and real option for closure. It was comforting, and helped me recognize that connecting to previously unknown relatives takes work, and requires honesty.

Lindsay Wagner portrayed a credible role of a firstborn separated from half of her birth family. Estranged from her father, she learned early in life to reach out with love towards others, adopting, so-to-speak, perfect strangers, providing them a safe sanctuary. Her other option was to be bitter, self-centered, and angry, but she chose to give, rather than take. Conversely, Melissa Gilbert begins by being angry and mistrusting.

These two characters actually portrayed the emotional schism that exists within children born unto such circumstances. Separating the juxtaposed emotions into two separate characters really helps the viewer, who may have experienced this dynamic, to sort out feelings and see potential character developments of each emotion. The fact that Gilbert's role evolved into a trusting, giving individual who reaches out to the lost and brings them into her heart demonstrated a resolution that people separated at birth might wish to follow. At least such a solution could bring peaceful closure to the wounds parents' decisions sometimes creates in the lives of their offspring.

I gave this a high rating because of the realistic solution to real-life emotional turmoil this movie brought. Thanks for airing it.