Hot Trends: Bonnie and Clyde: can the History Channel get away with this?

To even think about watching the History Channel's Bonnie and Clyde, you must first accept two unfortunate truths: yes, they really made this and no, at this point in the production cycle, you can't do anything to stop it.

What potential viewers must decide - much as they did for NBC's live Sound of Music last week - is exactly what level of desecration they're willing to see visited upon a beloved classic. Is your good sense often overruled by displays of beautiful costumes and a good old-fashioned car chase? Then yes, this is the remake for you.

But if you're a fan of the 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, stay away. And if you have even a passing familiarity with the real-life story of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker ... stay far, far away.

The History Channel's strategy here is to make it as difficult as possible to avoid watching this version. Airing in two parts across Sunday and Monday nights, Bonnie and Clyde is taking over three networks: History, A&E and Lifetime. The cast includes Emile Hirsch as Clyde and Holliday Granger as Bonnie, and Holly Hunter and William Hurt as the Academy Award-winning actors who are presumably being paid very well to lend some sort of credibility to this glossy project.

By the end of the first half-hour, you begin to have a sense for how this film was put together: the executives of three networks, having met in a neutral location, agreed to the basics but left it to writers Joe Bateer and John Rice to reverse-engineer enough action to fill four hours of primetime. They were woefully unprepared for the task.

Everything in this movie has been done better somewhere else. We have so many good examples of films and TV series that digest the Depression era's crime waves - The Untouchables, the original Bonnie and Clyde, Public Enemies, Boardwalk Empire - that it's impossible not to make comparisons that end poorly for this remake, no matter how pretty the costumes are.

But the production isn't even content to confine its thefts to the appropriate era. There's what the writers probably hoped was a charming scene in which Clyde, flush with the money from his first robbery, walks into a fancy clothing store, looking to spend it. A saleswoman takes a look at his farm duds, sniffs her nose and asks him to please not get his grubby hands all over her silks. It's Julia Roberts on Rodeo Drive all over again, but instead of giving the clerk her comeuppance ("Big mistake! Huge!"), he waits until dark and breaks in, to steal the five shirts he wanted.

This is four hours of missed opportunities in which a scene is built up, almost tap-dances to a satisfying clap ... and falls apart instead.

There are feminist outlines to this Bonnie Parker, who compares herself to Amelia Earhart and makes sure the local reporters know she's in the game every bit as much as Clyde. But she is crippled by writers who seem to have gained their understanding of feminism from frat houses and men's rights forums on the darkest corners of the internet.

The subreddit almost writes itself: Clyde loves his parents, his mother especially. It's just that the woman he loves, the woman he's sought since childhood, goads him into this life of crime. She's a vixen who flounces around in her silken lingerie, gets turned on by car chases and friend-zones the local sheriff. ("I've got enough damn friends," he says, shortly after she turns him down.) This Bonnie is a rejected actress who just wants to make a name for herself somehow, and Clyde is too smitten to notice that she doesn't love him nearly as much as he loves her.

"I'm not afraid of a commitment," Clyde tells Bonnie at one point. "I ain't afraid of making a baby." She grimaces.

There are threads that could have saved the film: Elisabeth Reaser as the journalist who latches on to the story first; Hunter as Bonnie's severe but loving mother; Hurt as a quiet lawman drawn out of retirement to track down the robbers. With four hours to fill, the time was certainly available to devote to tracing these characters. Instead, the extra time is spent lingering on Hirsch and Granger, with their bad Texas accents and near-complete lack of spark.

The crime here isn't that they've had the gall to remake Bonnie and Clyde - it's just that they did it so badly.