ABC (Thursdays, 8 p.m. ET)
C
Aloha. Timothy Busfield (thirtysomething) plays a Yale professor and widower with three children who decides to make a fresh start in Hawaii as a prep-school headmaster.
The show is simply (and simply) a Polynesian version of Going to Extremes, last year's series about medical-school students in the Caribbean. It runs aground on the same shoals: a slavishly metronomic seriocomic-rhythm, an attitude toward the native population that vacillates between glorification and condescension, overwritten scripts and a parade of tortuously idiosyncratic minor characters.
The supporting cast includes the Barbara Carrera-like Elizabeth Lindsey as a faculty member, the Charles Laughton-like Warren Frost as the island's gruff patron and the Bruce Weitz-like Bruce Weitz as a beachfront family therapist from Brooklyn. Busfield is a gifted actor, but he's reduced to Father Knows Best posturing here.
The Disney Channel (Thurs., March 17, 10:05 p.m. ET)
A-
Okay, you've watched John Wayne in The Quiet Man for the 37th time. Now how do you cap off your Saint Patrick's Day viewing? Sure and you couldn't do any finer than this lilting video rhapsody, narrated by Emmylou Harris. It tells the story of how traditional Irish music traveled to this country in steerage and began to shape and influence our musical forms, from bluegrass, folk and country to rock.
The program includes interviews with, among others, the Everly Brothers and U2's Bono (in a more decorous mood than he was in at the recent Grammy Awards). And there's lots of glorious music. One highlight is a snippet of Richard Thompson singing his "Dimming of the Day."
Showtime (Sat., March 19, 9 p.m. ET)
C-
They're back and, boy, are their feathers ruffled! In this shameless sequel to the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, our avian brethren, incensed at environmental depredations, are amassing on remote Gull Island and menacing a family of vacationers (sired by Brad Johnson and Chelsea Field). James Naughton costars along with Tippi Hedren, who starred in the original festival of fowl play.
Actually the special effects are pretty good for a while. But when they try to terrify us with casual flocks of pigeons, we slip into Mel Brooks territory (see High Anxiety). The movie's real problem, though, is that its suspense never acquires any altitude.
NBC (Saturdays, 10 p.m. ET)
C
This hazy new prime-time soap charts the tangled lives of midwestern suburbanites. The program is built on the customary soap pillars of romance and treachery. But the plotting is discursive, the humor misbegotten and the dialogue elliptical. As if that's not enough, the show commits the cardinal sin for a serial: Its stories are uninvolving.
What Winnetka Road does have is an overqualified ensemble cast, including Josh Brolin, Ed Begley Jr., Meg Tilly, Catherine Hicks, Paige Turco (who may be best known to TV audiences for her flattering Special K commercial), Kurt Deutsch, Megan Ward, Kristen Cloke, Eddie Bracken, Harley Venton and Richard Gilliland.
These appealing actors are trapped in a dramatic environment as opaque and disjointed as an Ionesco play. "You're not sure what they're supposed to be doing, and you sense that oftentimes, neither are they.
USA (Saturdays, 10:30 p.m. ET)
B+
The hero of this grown-up cartoon is a bumbling private detective and ineffectual paterfamilias. He's hapless, hectored, henpecked, and he's trying to quit smoking. No wonder Duckman is one cranky drake.
In temperament, the crudely drawn Duckman (voice provided by Seinfeld's Jason Alexander) is like his relative Daffy, constantly blowing gaskets over life's frustrations.
The show is a train crash of sight gags, puns, spoofs and mock-existential ponderings. Inventive and daft, this cartoon is just plain ducky.
CBS (Sun., March 20, 9 p.m. ET)
B
Marlo Thomas and Mel Hams star in this true story as two sisters who bring suit against their father for the abuse he heaped upon them as children. Ironically, the offending parent had a distinguished career in law enforcement as a child-abuse expert.
The suit, which pits family members against one another, results in the father being tried in court in absentia. He refuses to attend, denying all allegations except that he was a strict disciplinarian. Meanwhile the flashbacks and memories rain down in ever more brutal detail.
As a movie, this is like one long, unremitting scream of anguish (a not-particularly-well-acted one at that). Taken as psychodrama, it's strong and disturbing. Kathryn Dowling and Ally Sheedy costar.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
