Tom Shales Review of First Nightline Washington Post
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 Kathleen York and Michael Madsen star in "Vengeance Unlimited." (ABC) |
These aren't just time-killers, ladies and gentlemen. These are serial time-killers. They clobber and torture time before killing it, too.
The new shows are so bad that at least one boob tube critic asked to be put on a 24-hr suicide watch during his days and nights of laborious airplane pilot-viewing. The asking, incidentally, was denied. Only his pilot light kept going out anyway.
A ingather of shoddy shows hardly means we will lack for compelling tv, nonetheless. Tv's latest amazing reality miniseries, the White Firm sexual practice scandal, which everyone is sick of merely which notwithstanding draws millions of viewers, promises (or threatens) to drag on and on. Every moralistic windbag, later on all, must be heard from. As unsavory amusement and guilty-pleasure viewing, information technology'south the biggest baddest bombolina of the decade. In fact it may cease up making the wretched excesses of O.J. Simpson coverage look terse and tasteful.
5 BEST NEW SHOWS v WORST NEW SHOWS
1. "Sports Night," ABC
2. "Felicity," WB
3. "Cupid," ABC
4. "The Brian Benben Prove," CBS
5. "Martial Law," CBS
1. "L.A. Doctors," CBS
2. "Buddy Faro," CBS
three. "The King of Queens," CBS
4. "Living in Captivity," Play a joke on
5. "Fantasy Island," ABC
– Tom Shales
Of course, the circulate networks tin can always toss in another cheap magazine show to fill up an empty space. It's hard at present to discover a night when that dreadful "Dateline NBC" isn't on, and ABC has hypercloned "20/20" into a three-night franchise. Even CBS News caved in to the tendency and will introduce a kind of "Son of '60 Minutes'�" later in the season. Suggested slogan for that 1: "All the stories that weren't good enough for the real 'sixty Minutes'!"
Yous can't wait much innovation or experimentation by the networks when their principal goal is just to hold on desperately to the viewers they still have. With their share of the total TV audition continuing to erode, the networks don't desire to air anything and so new and bold information technology might scare anybody away. Records are being set all the time, merely for the lowest-rated Saturday night ever, the everyman-rated Wednesday night ever, and so on.
Although last year's crop of new shows was a tiny tad better than this year's, the 1997-98 season has to exist looked upon as a resounding failure. Zenith Media Service, which makes a business organization of charting Boob tube's ups and downs, has found a lot more downs than ups lately. Its summary of last flavor: Information technology produced "the lowest level of render for new programs" in Telly history.
"Of the 35 serial that premiered concluding fall," says Zenith's annual written report, "simply five survived the season, an abysmal fourteen pct success rate. This is in sharp contrast to the 45 per centum return rate of fall '96 freshmen." Thirty shows canceled out of 35 introduced! It'due south an extraordinary accomplishment, in an utterly appalling sort of way.
An additional 23 shows premiered later during the season, and of those, a mere 16 have died and gone to TV'southward ever-expanding Kicking Loma. Really, it's Boot Mountain now. Soon to be the vast Boot Range. As for what lies merely ahead, in a story headlined "Networks Face up Ability Outage," Daily Diversity predicts "one of the most lackluster fall seasons in recent memory" and notes, "Information technology'southward not a smashing sign that there's less buzz well-nigh the new crop of fall shows than about the backroom deals that were fabricated to go those shows on the air." Example: NBC paying Warner Bros. a staggering $13 million for each new episode of returning hit "ER."
The basic problem can be stated simply: There aren't enough truly talented people out there in Hollywood to produce enough practiced television to make full all the channels. And guess what. More than channels are coming. As channels proliferate, the amount of bad telly becomes virtually immeasurable.
1 TV tradition that began last season has already been continued this year. Fox has canceled one of its new shows, "Hollyweird," earlier information technology ever got on the air, just as it did concluding twelvemonth with something called "Rewind." At all the networks, more new shows than e'er are undergoing terminal-infinitesimal revision and recasting. The networks have gone from mere tinkering and tweaking to hypertink and supertweak.
Simply wait. What'southward that humming, rumbling rum-tum-tumbling sound? It's the curtain going up and the overture beginning for the new autumn tv set season. Pretend you intendance. Delight.
NEW ABC SHOWS
ABC NUTSHELL
Rank: No. iii
Prime-Time Audience: 12.3 million
Real Boss: Michael Eisner, Disney chairman and CEO
Crown Jewel: "Mon Dark Football"
New Sitcoms: "Brother's Keeper," "The Hughleys," "The Surreptitious Lives of Men," "Sports Night," "Ii of a Kind"
New Dramas: "Cupid," "Fantasy Isle," "Vengeance"
Best Shot for a Hit: "Ii of a Kind"
Strategy: Stretch football franchise to fill Monday prime time in society to prepare 8 p.k. ratings black hole. Put established shows in other 8 p.thou. time slots beyond week to bring viewers to the network. Be the get-go of the Big Iii to abandon Sun motion picture and give viewers an alternative viewing selection. Change proper noun of all newsmagazines to "twenty/twenty" to create strong make identity more than competitive with NBC's "Dateline."
– Lisa de Moraes
"Sports Nighttime" is the almost agreeable, least abrasive, about humane new sitcom of the year, a refreshing surprise. Prepare backstage at an 11 p.m. sports news show obviously patterned on ESPN'due south epochal "SportsCenter," the series teams Peter Krause and Josh Charles ("Threesome") every bit the evidence's anchors, with Felicity Huffman as their tough yet occasionally tender producer and Robert Guillaume equally the big boss over all. The newsroom is total of crackly banter and bubbly hubbub in the best tradition of comedies about journalists, and the characters register strongly correct off the bat. (Tuesday, ix:thirty p.m.)
"The Secret Lives of Men" is actually about the not-then-secret lives of dull men, 3 divorced guys who hang around a golf course and love to shoot the cakewalk – to death. Peter Gallagher, Bradley Whitford and Mitch Rouse at to the lowest degree have variety going for them; they're all unlikable in different ways, and the pilot features icky jokes nigh death, defecation and diarrhea. In sum: utterly unnecessary and flagrantly apartment. (Wednesday, 9:30 p.one thousand.)
"Vengeance Unlimited" stars Michael Madsen, who was so scary in "Reservoir Dogs" and so warm and fuzzy in "Gratuitous Willy." Here he's back to being scary, playing an "Blaster"-similar vigilante named Mr. Chapel who helps bring to justice criminals who have escaped their due penalization. Many viewers will consider the series undue penalization, but it may win a few fans with its premiere, because Mr. Chapel terrorizes a mangy lawyer correct out of his $30 socks. Maybe ABC could sic him on Kenneth Starr. (Thursday, 8 p.m.)
"2 of a Kind" suffices as a new entry for ABC'south Friday night, family-friendly "TGIF" comedy block even though at that place'due south really nothing new about information technology. As it turns out, those adorably adorable Olsen Twins have finally learned how to speak dialogue so it tin can exist understood. They play cutie-pie cut-ups who proceed trying to get their widowed daddy remarried, perhaps to the hammy nanny (strident Sally Wheeler) they become him to rent in the premiere. Warning, warning: Not for the weak of tum. (Friday, 8 p.m.)
"Brother's Keeper." Like virtually every other new series Television set Guide picked equally a "favorite" in the fall lineups, this one stinks. It'south all virtually the low jinks that ensue when a pro football actor with a playboy lifestyle has to move in with his button-downwardly blood brother and the brother's cute 8-year-erstwhile son. The child is ridiculed past the football game star for being a careful student and, nether the influence of the new arrival, declares it "absurd" when Dad gets embroiled in a bar brawl. As Dad himself says in the premiere, "This is not gonna work." (Friday, ix:xxx p.1000.)
"Fantasy Island" was an amusingly worthless entertainment during its first incarnation on ABC as an Aaron Spelling show in the late '70s and early '80s. It certainly became iconic. The new version, produced by a whole new generation of hacks, substitutes pretentiousness, gloom and New-Age philosophizin' for the old kitsch and kookery. In then doing, they've managed the seemingly impossible: They've fabricated Aaron Spelling wait skilful. Malcolm McDowell plays Mr. Roarke this time, and he's strictly from Creepsville. (Saturday, 9 p.m.)
"Cupid" deserves kudos; it's a bear witness that sounds coy and moist and actually turns out to exist semi-clever and fallacious. Jeremy Piven, one of the straight friends on the expired "Ellen," plays either Trevor Hale, a deluded loony who thinks he's Cupid, or the real matter, Cupid himself. His mission is to unite 100 couples in happy harmony and so he tin can return to the fun and frolic of Mount Olympus. Gimmicky or non, it'southward got amuse. (Saturday, 10 p.m.)
NEW CBS SHOWS
CBS NUTSHELL
Rank: No. 2
Prime-Time Audience: 14.ane million
Real Boss: Mel Karmizan, CBS Corp. president and COO
Crown Gem: NFL football
Muddied Undercover: Network's audition is so old it gets far fewer advertisement bucks than networks with smaller but younger audiences.
New Sitcoms: "The Brian Benben Show," "The Rex of Queens," "Maggie Winters."
New Dramas: "Buddy Faro," "50.A. Doctors," "Martial Police force," "To Have & to Hold."
Best Shot for a Striking: "Martial Law."
Strategy: Empty wallet to get football back on the network, replace old-timer Tom Snyder with Comedy Central hipster Craig Kilborn, and put shock jock Howard Stern on Saturday nights – all in hopes of bringing more than young viewers to the network.
– Lisa de Moraes
"The Brian Benben Show" turns out to be not that bad-bad, especially considering how smarmy Benben was leering his way through HBO's "Dream On." Every bit an Fifty.A. anchor unseated by a plastic-coated mannequin (think Stone Phillips), he skillfully plots revenge, having been kept on at the station to replace the human-interest reporter who was killed by "an ape in oestrus" while roofing a zoo story. Bad sign: Only about six minutes into the commencement prove, Benben'due south already dropped his pants. (Monday, ix:30 p.m.)
"L.A. Doctors" takes the cake among new-season shows as the howliest, dopiest and dim-wittedest drama, about as appetizing and entertaining equally colonoscopy. The audience is asked to empathize with 3 rich internists and a gorgeous blond partner operating out of a lavishly appointed building and catering to rich clients. Ken Olin outdoes his previous embarrassments playing the leader of the grouping, a greedy rich dishonest who in the premiere hires a publicist to ballyhoo the house. Awful and dreadful, "L.A. Doctors" reaches a new top of asinine inanity. (Monday, 10 p.m.)
"Maggie Winters" will take you rooting for Religion Ford (Corky on "Murphy Chocolate-brown") simply not for Maggie Winters, the character she plays, and overplays, in this forced sitcom: a feisty young woman who returns to her home boondocks after her dentist husband runs off with his hygienist. Equally Winters seems trapped in the joyless burg, then Ford seems trapped past the very limited possibilities of the premise. She tries hard, though. That'south for darn sure. (Wednesday, viii:30 p.grand.)
"To Accept and to Concord" is to record and to erase. It's a means-well kind of drama, and the stars, Jason Beghe and Moira Kelly, are certainly attractive, merely the contrivance of having them play newlyweds who also oppose each other in court equally cop and public defender comes across as an albatross around them. "Adam'due south Rib" it ain't. (Wednesday, ix p.m.)
"Buddy Faro," or "The Further Adventures of a Jerk," stars Dennis Farina in the title part, a celebrated and inebriated private eye who returns to Los Angeles after 20 years of retirement in Mexico, nevertheless using come up-ons like "Hiya, toots, how near a little rub-a-dub-dub?" when a rich woman discovers him in her bathtub. Though imaginatively shot and edited, the pilot seems shiny but soulless, and then does Farina. (Friday, 9 p.1000.)
"Martial Law." Only most half the airplane pilot of this chop-socky action series was available for preview, but it looked every bit if it had possibilities, at to the lowest degree as elementary-minded escapism full of cleverly choreographed fights. Massive Sammo Hung (yeah, that'due south actually his name) plays a fleet-footed Chinese cop transferred from Shanghai to Los Angeles, where heaven knows the police department could utilize some help. (Saturday, nine p.g.)
NEW NBC SHOWS
NBC NUTSHELL
Rank: No. ane
Prime-Time Audition: 14.nine million
Real Boss: Bob Wright, president and CEO, NBC
Crown Jewel: "ER"
Dirty Secret: $13 million per episode fee to Warner Bros. for "ER" means more in-house-produced "Dateline" editions on schedule to help amortize cost, and in-business firm-produced drama series to prevent network from existence held upwards again.
New Sitcoms: "Jesse," "Conrad Bloom," "Encore! Encore!" "Volition & Grace"
New Dramas: "Trinity," "Current of air on Water"
Best Shot for a Striking: "Jesse" (it airs between "Friends" and "Frasier")
Strategy: Shore up Thursday hole left by departing "Seinfeld." Plough into a sitcom and news network. Big-ticket movies only on Sunday.
– Lisa de Moraes
"Will & Grace" aims to do for NBC what "Dharma and Greg" has done for ABC, but NBC's lovable couple isn't lovable. Will (Eric McCormack) is a supposedly gay young lawyer, only he's most the straightest gay guy ever on Television. He acts as though he wouldn't bat an eye if Brad Pitt walked into the room naked and oiled. Co-ordinate to the premise, Volition is platonic friends with daffy Grace (Debra Messing), who has bad gustatory modality in men, which would seem to include men who are her platonic friends. The subsidiary characters on the show are fun and completely upstage the sparkleless "stars." (Monday, 9:30 p.thousand.)
"Encore! Encore!" will have yous shouting anything but. Although created by the team that gave a grateful world "Frasier," the troubled new sitcom stars Nathan Lane as a vain opera vocaliser who loses his voice and returns to live at the family unit vineyard in Northern California. So now who exactly is supposed to identify with that? Certainly all the retired opera singers volition tune in. Lane, so great in "The Birdcage" onscreen and in diverse triumphs on Broadway, quickly grows slow playing the blabby fussbudget. Joan Plowright, Herself, is wasted as his female parent only even so has fun with the role, specially when she smacks Lane upside the head. Yous tin can almost hear her saying, "Who got me into this mess?" (Tuesday, viii:thirty p.m., Sept. 22)
"Jesse" is another case of a lovable leading lady deserving a better show – like Faith Ford with "Maggie Winters." The unlucky actress this time is Christina Applegate, the knockout from "Married . . . With Children," playing a divorced waitress at her bigot father's bar in Buffalo. Already it sounds more than similar tragedy than comedy. Jesse has a dumb blood brother who refuses to speak and a dumber brother who buys 8,000 garden gnomes, hoping to get rich by selling them. A hunk from Chile moves in next door and will apparently be Jesse's love interest, merely then far, even the sparks are soggy. (Th, 8:30 p.grand.)
"Trinity" is the saga of an Irish American family who evidently will manage to wrestle with all the topical issues of our time every bit well every bit their own relationships. Starring nobody in particular. (Friday, 9 p.m.)
"Wind on H2o," which NBC has also declined to make available for screening, brings Bo Derek to television for her kickoff weekly series since the plummet of her bombed-out motion-picture show career. She apparently plays the Barbara Stanwyck part in a Hawaiian version of "The Big Valley" (1965-69), which, if it does nothing else, will probably remind everybody how much they miss Barbara Stanwyck. (Sabbatum, 8 p.grand., Oct. 17)
NEW Pull a fast one on SHOWS
FOX NUTSHELL
Rank: No. 4
Prime-Fourth dimension Audience: 10.half dozen million
Real Boss: Peter Chernin, president and COO, News Corp., and chairman and CEO, Fox Grouping
Crown Jewel: "The X-Files"
Dirty Secret: Best half-hour sitcoms are cartoons – "King of the Loma" and "The Simpsons"; how come they can't develop a sitcom with existent live people?
New Sitcoms: "Property the Baby," "Feeling Alright," "That '70s Show," "Costello"
New Drama: "Brimstone"
New Other Shows: "Guinness Earth Records," "Fox Files" (news magazine).
All-time Shot for a Hit: "Guinness Earth Records"
Strategy: Open new sitcom fourth dimension slots on Tuesday, Sunday and Friday. Fill troublesome fourth dimension slots with reality programming and develop paranormal dramas.
– Lisa de Moraes
Naturally or not, the show airs on the Trick network.
"Costello," a very advised and blabby sitcom, stars stand up-upward comic Sue Costello as, get this, Sue Murphy, waitress in a Boston bar, single mom and dreamer of a improve life via cocky-educational activity. "Hey, Sue," says a scoffing client, "could you actualize your potential and bring me a beer?" Much of the prove's humor, however, is vulgar even by electric current standards. Yet, Costello does seem a powerful new source of energy. (Tuesday, 8:30 p.k.)
"Holding the Baby," a sitcom about a hubby and male parent's attempts to divide himself between the workplace and the homeplace, stars Eddie McClintock and Jennifer Westfeldt. And of course, a baby. (Sunday, 7:30 p.m.)
"Brimstone," another dark and muddied spook-o-rama in the increasingly moldy "Ten-Files" mold, returns Peter ("thirtysomething") Horton to television as a dead cop sent back to Earth to dial out the eyes of mischievous zombies. Huh? Not screened, and it doesn't premiere until Oct. 27 (Tuesday, nine p.m.)
NEW WB SHOWS
WB NUTSHELL
Rank: No. 5
Prime-Time Audition: 4.5 one thousand thousand
Real Dominate: Bob Daly
Crown Gem: "Dawson'due south Creek."
Dirty Secret: They have no programs on Friday or Saturday.
New Sitcom: "The Regular army Show"
New Dramas: "Charmed," "Felicity," "Hyperion."
Best Shot for a Striking: "Felicity" Strategy: Grow audience with branded kids shows and network of one-time Fox folks, goes after very young audience with teen-angst dramas.
– Lisa de Moraes
Dictating a letter into a tape recorder, making goo-goo eyes at a boy who doesn't know of her passionate fascination with him, or standing upwardly to her parents when they need she leave mean onetime New York, Russell as Felicity is at the very least felicitous. Every bit the Police force once sang in their early days, "Every fiddling thing she does is magic." Lovely, touching, endearing – both Russell and her series. (Tuesday, nine p.m.)
"Charmed," the adventures of a trio of whimsical witches, marks the return to TV of Shannen Doherty, who, it seems, volition inevitably play fatty-faced Monica Lewinsky in a Television receiver pic somewhere downward the road (Wed, 9 p.one thousand.). "The Ground forces Show," a cocky-descriptive one-act in uniform, stars a fat guy and a thin guy (Lord's day, ix:30 p.m.). And "Hyperion Bay" is a new drama series about troubled youths, the only kind Television set knows (Monday, 9 p.g.).
NEW UPN SHOWS
UPN NUTSHELL
Rank: No. six
Prime-Time Audience: 4 million
Existent Dominate: Kerry McCluggage, Paramount TV Group chairman; Evan Thompson, president and CEO, United Television Inc.
Crown Gem: "Star Trek: Voyager"
Dirty Cloak-and-dagger: Network partners Paramount and United Television at odds.
New Sitcoms: "DiResta," "Guys Like Us," "The Hugger-mugger Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer"
New Dramas: "Legacy," "Mercy Indicate," "Seven Days"
Best Shot for a Hit: "Legacy"
Strategy: Broaden urban audience with eclectic mix of diverse programming. Expand from 3 to five nights. Abound new audition through deal with Disney to provide kids' programming Monday through Friday afternoons and Sunday morning, starting in fall of 1999. Get into new cablevision markets.
– Lisa de Moraes
Whatever you do, don't confuse "Trinity" with "Felicity" or "Legacy" with "Living in Captivity." And don't get "DiResta" mixed up with de resta da shows, heh heh heh.
MOVIES, MINISERIES, SPECIALS
ABC'southward roster of big events this season is dominated by remakes. Oprah Winfrey has produced a new version of, of all things, that soppy old melodrama "David and Lisa," nearly two very special people meeting at a mental hospital. It airs Lord's day, Nov. ane, at 9 p.m. Meanwhile, Christopher Reeve stars in a new version of the Alfred Hitchcock archetype "Rear Window." Which we need like a hole in the rear head (Dominicus, November. 22, 9 p.m.). Whoopi Goldberg will star in a new version of Mark Twain'south "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur'south Court"; Jane Seymour and married man James Keach will head up "The New Swiss Family Robinson"; and a certain supple supermodel takes to the airwaves in the bluntly titled special "Sex With Cindy Crawford," Tuesday nighttime at 10.
CBS volition unveil a new miniseries based on a work past Alex "Roots" Haley: "Mama Flora's Family," another multigenerational saga. The network also plans a iv-hr, nonmusical version of E.L. Doctorow'due south "Ragtime" (already fabricated into a theatrical film and a Broadway play); and four of the Baldwin brothers – Alec, Daniel, Stephen and William – star as "The Harris Brothers," who ring together when the hateful one-time railroad takes their land. How'southward that for a new plot?
NBC, concluding year'south almost assisting network (and the year earlier that, and the year – well, y'all get the thought), has the nearly dazzling slate of big-bang projects, including an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's "Criminal offence and Penalisation"; Jon Voight in "Noah's Ark," which Voight in network promos is calling the biggest production in Television history; Kevin Costner in a western miniseries chosen "Not Between Brothers"; and "Stephen Crane's [no, not Stephen King's] The Monster," starring Danny Glover as a turn-of-the-century hero whom racists try to make a villain. It's based on a Crane short story.
CABLE
Original movies premiering on HBO this season: "Walter Winchell," a biography of the widely feared and hated gossip columnist, with Stanley Tucci in the title part; "Lansky," with Richard Dreyfuss as Meyer Lansky, a gangster who inspired one of the memorable characters in "The Godfather"; and "Shot Through the Heart," a story of brotherly dear set amid the strife and horror of modern Sarajevo.
The biggest i-person show on HBO'southward fall agenda is "Janet: The Velvet Rope," a mucho fabuloso (i would assume) Janet Jackson concert to be aired live from Madison Square Garden on October. xi. You go, girl!
Starting time'south nib of fare includes two Holocaust dramas later this month. "Rescuers: Stories of Courage – Two Families," about Christian families who rescued Jews from the Nazis, was co-produced by Barbra Streisand. "The Island on Bird Street," set in Poland during Nazi occupation, concentrates on a young male child whose dandy-uncle dies in the human action of saving the boy from a concentration military camp.
In Oct, Beginning begins a series of movies featuring characters from the 1947 film noir classic "Naked City," with the first, "Justice With a Bullet," airing Sunday, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m. The tardily Due east.G. Marshall will be featured in one of his final projects, another movie based on Marshall'southward great Television series "The Defenders." This one, chosen "Taking the First," co-stars Fellow Bridges and Martha Plimpton and premiered Sun, Oct. 25, at eight p.m.
Comedy Central will try to class up its act with a series of specials based on the famous Friars Club glory roasts. Victim No. one is comic Drew Carey on Wednesday, October. 28. Turner Archetype Movies (TCM), all-time of the old-pic channels, offers a salute to Universal horror films, only equally American Picture show Classics (AMC) did terminal year. But TCM's festival includes a new documentary, "Universal Horror," narrated by Kenneth Branagh, which premiered Fri, October. 9, at 8 p.m.
PUBLIC TV
Mobil's "Masterpiece Theatre" returns for another season with such productions equally "King Lear," starring Ian Holm (Sun, Oct. eleven), and the umpty-umpth version of Emily Bronte'south nothing-if-not-venerable "Wuthering Heights," with Robert Cavanah as the Heathcliff who chases Orla Brady'due south Cathy all over the damp moors (Dominicus, Oct. 18). Actually, NBC also has a version of the novel planned, with actor Gabriel Byrne producing merely not starring.
"Africans in America" promises to be one of the major PBS efforts of the twelvemonth, a four-role documentary (each part ninety minutes) that will effort the most thorough investigation of slavery ever done on movie. The miniseries arrogance Oct. nineteen-22 at 8 each night.
Presumably somewhat less fascinating and relevant will be the PBS production "Legendary Lighthouses," six hours about those noble beacons of the seashore. Wait, they're kidding, correct? It'southward some kind of a joke, no? Alas, like much else about the season ahead, including the sitcom set in the Lincoln White House, it'south all likewise true.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/tv/shales/newseason98shales.htm
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