A TV adaptation of a 12-page John Cheever short story made outside the auspices of Merchant-Ivory Productions, The 5:48 is atypical in almost every respect while still demonstrating all the hallmarks of James Ivory's directorial style. Screenwriter Terrence McNally makes judicious use of Cheever's crisp and layered dialogue, but the incisive depiction of a dissipated advertising executive is most powerfully communicated through camera movements and shifts in point-of-view. Ivory took on the project just after completing his first film version of a major Henry James novel (The Europeans, 1979), and he appears to have welcomed the opportunity to shift scale and tone.