Disney Channel (Thurs., May 26, 9 p.m. ET)
A-
Time for a little network nostalgia. Paul Reiser (Mad About You) serves as host for three specials built around Jackie Gleason's work on the Cavalcade of Stars variety show on the DuMont network in the early '50s. (Gleason was the third host of Cavalcade, following Jack Carter and Jerry Lester. When the Great One was hired away by CBS, he was in turn replaced by Larry Storch, who would gain prime-time notoriety a decade later as Corporal Agarn in F Troop.)
This initial installment of the Gleason triptych is made up of the first six sketches featuring Brooklyn's bumptious Kramdens, all from 1951. Gleason, of course, plays Ralph. Pert Kelton plays Alice with a more truculent edge than Audrey Meadows would later bring to the role. Art Carney appears first as a nameless cop who is an innocent victim of one of the Kramdens' battle royals. In each subsequent skit, Carney turns up in his accustomed role as Ed Norton, the rose of the New York City sewer system. Trixie is played once by Elaine Stritch and then forevermore by Joyce Randolph. How sweet it still is!
NBC (Mon., May 30, 9 p.m. ET)
B
Our first glimpse of Eric Stoltz: He's sitting in a sunny, sumptuously appointed drawing room playing Chopin on the piano. Our introduction to Randy Quaid: He's slamming beers in a dingy bar. What this effete Harvard grad and slobby ex-con have in common is AIDS—and soon, an apartment in a residential hospice for people with the disease. It's like Gore Vidal and Archie Bunker sharing a phone booth.
You can see where this one is going: Antagonists slowly open up to one another, share their vulnerabilities and become intimates. Before you know it, Stoltz is shooting pool and Quaid is checking out Moby Dick.
The film is too schematic and sappy, but flashes of insight in the script and fine acting (Charles Durning and Elizabeth Pena costar) make this sob story far better than it might have been.
Still, it bothers me that Quaid has to be a hetero who contracts AIDS through a blood transfusion. Even at this point, the networks wouldn't touch with a zoom lens a film about two gay men. One straight guy apparently removes the stigma.
The Discovery Channel (Mon., May 30, 9 p.m. ET)
B+
Amid the armada of specials marking the 50th anniversary of D Day (June 6, 1944), when the Allied Expeditionary Force under General Eisenhower began the invasion of Europe, this documentary furnishes the best overview. For the best you-are-there stock footage of World War II, though, see PBS's powerful season closer of The American Experience: "D-Day" (Wed., May 25, 9 p.m. ET).
Normandy comprises numerous individual perspectives provided by participants, both civilian and military, from both sides of the massive battle. These letters, diaries and remembrances create a rich backdrop for the period clips and battle footage.
The film is narrated by none other than Charles Durning, who, then 17, was among the Allied troops to swarm ashore on the first day of the Normandy campaign. Durning's valor that terrible day at Omaha Beach won him three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star.
CBS (Tues., May 31, 9 p.m. ET)
B
CBS News takes the wraps off a promising new venture, Before Your Eyes. This sporadic series of documentaries chronicles at some length stories too messy, too sprawling and altogether too personal to ever be encapsulated on the evening news. Call it 4800 Hours.
The show's pilot follows the Coalters, a blue-collar family in Michigan, just days after the second of their three children, 14-year-old Kristin, runs off with a 49-year-old long-haul trucker accused of sexually abusing his own young daughter. Cameramen exhaustively record the Coalters' desperate efforts to locate and retrieve their girl, tracking events to some very unexpected resolutions.
Though the material doesn't quite merit its two-hour length, it is set to a very effective soundtrack of country and pop songs. This piece of video vérité—so unvarnished it carries splinters—provides an in-depth look at small-town life and a family's anguish.
>ARRIVEDERCI, ARSENIO
FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN ARSENIO HALL erupted on the talk show circuit, he was a pop culture phenomenon, an uproarious upstart who reinvigorated the late shift. Woof, woof! This week, his numbers in steady decline, his showbiz cachet exhausted, Arsenio closes up the dog pound. His last original show airs Friday (May 27).
The key to Arsenio's initial success was startlingly simple: He took advantage of the fact that many young adults keep vampire's hours. He also sensed that they weren't interested in such traditional sofa staples as Tony Randall and Teri Garr. Arsenio offered this large pool of disenfranchised viewers-in-waiting a selection of younger, hipper guests—and they tuned in, despite Hall's anemic monologues and unctuous interview style. Yes, Arsenio ran the comfiest couch for celebs since the hail-fellow heydays of Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin. The kid-glove treatment is why, for a time, the A-man was able to attract the A-list.
Of course, everyone coveted the audience Arsenio had tapped into. First NBC with Leno and then CBS with Letterman stole big pieces of his action. And once the mantle of hipness had passed from Arsenio to Letterman, Hall's nights were numbered. Now they are history.
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!
