This is my bash wrappe around nntp-pull so that is automatically restarts if an article is missing.

downloader.sh

#!/bin/bash

while getopts g: flag
do
    case "${flag}" in
        g) group=${OPTARG};;
    esac
done

downloader() {
nntp-pull -v $group
}

until downloader; do
    echo "restarting download" >&2
    sleep 1
done