Mark Harmon is Stalked by a Killer — and His Conscience — in Original Sins

As a non-Catholic, I’m not sure how many Our Fathers and Hail Marys it would take to atone for such an absolute dog as Original Sins (1995), but I reckon it’s a lot. On the Tori Spelling scale of TV movie terribleness, it’s better than Mind Over Murder (so is gallbladder surgery) but not quite as convincing as Death of a Cheerleader, if that’s any help at all. Despite a sexy Father Ralph de Bricassart twist that might’ve titillated my grandmother in the ’90s, this one’s a massive yawner.

“I have a confession to make,” Jonathan Frayne (Mark Harmon, whose Deliberate Stranger we’ve also reviewed) tells the listeners of his inaugural True Confessions talk radio broadcast. “This is hard. I’ve never done this before. It’s very hard to say something you’re afraid of to a complete stranger.” He relates a traumatic childhood story about his mistreatment of a friend and concludes “If there was some way to make up for it, I would. Anybody out there has something to get off their chest, give me a call.”

Listeners are soon lighting up the phone lines with tales of extramarital affairs and embezzlement, a criminal admission that catches the attention of law enforcement. Jonathan, a mysterious loner who travels by bicycle and seems to live a fairly ascetic existence, clashes with producer Becka Sharp (Julianne Phillips) and station head Chas Bradley (Ron Perlman) after the embezzler is nabbed by the cops.

“A listener calls in, confesses, and gets arrested? This is betrayal!” he rants. “I’m not here to punish people.” Becka maintains the thief punished himself, but Jonathan won’t hear of it. “This show is about trust,” he insists. “If you arrest people, you have no trust. If you have no trust you have no show.” He demands complete anonymity for his callers, a wish he is granted with predictable results.

Their voices electronically altered, his listeners go wild. “I’m 72 years old and I have to confess that I adore you. I think your voice is incredibly sexy and I just want to get you between the sheets. When you talk I imagine you buck naked and it drives me wild,” one tells him, before we segue to a sinister murder confession from Jonathan’s soon-to-be stalker. “She died an awful death,” the caller says of his victim. “I know because I killed her. Thank you, Jon. I feel so much better.”

Detectives quickly (and nonsensically) crack down on the station, forcing it to retract all promises of anonymity. Without the on-air protection of voice masking, the killer begins calling Jonathan at home. Before you know it, he’s also harassing Laura Ebersol (Sarah Trigger), a young violinist and fan of the show whose shyness and innocence Jonathan finds enchanting.

Jonathan, a conflicted man tormented by a private tragedy, seems unbothered that Laura has a knack for knowing his routines, or that she drops ominous clues of a dark past. “When you confess, loud in public, you change yourself fundamentally,” he tells her over coffee. “I try not to judge, because I’m not qualified. I mean, how can someone say that someone else is guilty? I don’t offer forgiveness. But I am also not a judge or jury. That makes me an accomplice. That’s what I am.”

Sarah, drawn to his solemnity and inaccessibility, repeatedly tries to seduce him. When that doesn’t work, she begins to suspect the problem is flirtatious Becka, whose advances he also rebuffed. (As slick corporate types, the underutilized Phillips and Perlman seem to exist in another movie than the eerie Trigger or remote Harmon.) The other woman, it turns out, is God. After Sarah survives an apartment explosion caused by his stalker, Jonathan finally comes clean: as a Marine he survived a barracks explosion and found his calling while watching a priest minister to his friends.

“I was looking for something my whole life. And suddenly, right then, I saw it. I saw it in that priest’s face. I saw it in the faces of those men. They told him things they’d never told anybody. That was it. I came home and I joined the seminary. I took my vow. And I really thought I’d found something in my life.” But he strayed with a parishioner and took a leave of absence following her suicide, feeling complicit in her death due to a difficult conversation they had in confession weeks earlier.

Oy vey, right? Now we’re juggling a Father Dowling Mysteries situation in addition to the Thorn Birds-ian shebang as Jonathan investigates the murder his stalker claims to have committed. Sophisticated and unsophisticated palates alike will additionally detect strong notes of the dreaded Bunny Boiler (last explored here in Jennie Garth’s An Unfinished Affair). Alas, Jonathan remains painfully inattentive, even after a damning rat poisoning incident that leaves him spasming atop a staircase.

Laughs are few in Original Sins — John Pielmeier’s screenplay takes itself quite seriously — but the poisoning scene is a howler that deserves a “choreography by David Byrne” credit. Suspense and ambiguity are also in short supply. Harmon, one of the undisputed kings of the American telefilm, stalks around in a long black coat (even as a civilian, Jonathan dresses like a priest), his bangs boyishly covering his eyes. He does his best to bring gravity to a paper-thin role but we never quite connect with Jonathan or his inner struggles.

Trigger, handed the most thankless role in the movie, that of a psychotic incest survivor, does good work that is ultimately overshadowed by her character’s essential weirdness (a weirdness that is only amplified by Jonathan’s extreme obliviousness to it). Director Jan Egleson gives us a bit of mournful atmosphere and a few artfully composed shots, but the problem’s in the story: Original Sins is long on conceit and short on character.

Streaming and DVD availability

Original Sins, also known as Acts of Contrition, hasn’t been released on DVD. You can currently stream it (free with ads) on Tubi, and bootlegs often circulate on YouTube.

… But wait, there’s more!

While I felt he missed the mark with this one, screenwriter John Pielmeier has a filmography worth investigating. His biggest hit, an adaptation of his stage play, is one you will have heard of: Agnes of God. When it comes to TV movies, Pielmeier adapts a lot of true crime stories, but there are also remakes of Sybil (psychiatric problems are another of his specialties) and Flowers for Algernon. What really got me, though, was Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. I hope he was paid handsomely for that one.