Pioneer Women (1973)

I was pleasantly surprised with this made for TV movie about a woman’s experiences travelling with her family from Indiana to Kansas then on to Wyoming. William Shatner is her idiot husband who forces her family to leave their comfortable town life to move to the wilderness. He’s completely ill-prepared and leads them on one misadventure to another, angering various people along the way. Joanna Pettet plays the woman and the film is moved along by her diary narrations. It’s her strength that propels and even though they’re likely to die at the first winter (I’ve seen enough pioneering reality shows to have an idea of what a family of three needs to keep themselves fed and warm through the cold season), you still want to hold some hope for them. The film also features a very young Helen Hunt as the couple’s daughter who seems to have inherited her father’s idiocy.