HBO (Sat., May 8, 8 p.m. ET)
C
In the near future, America has gone fascist. People who are found to have a deadly, sexually transmitted disease that is ravaging the population are branded and dragged off to hellish quarantines. Bands of green-shirted youths roam the streets, preying on the weak and the nonconformists.
In the rubble of New York City, a young girl (Moira Kelly) falls for a leader of the underground (Cuba Gooding Jr.). It's a reverse Orpheus and Eurydice kind of love affair, as she follows him into quarantine.
Omar Epps, Martha Plimpton, Alice Drummond and David Eigenberg costar. John Savage plays the Big Brother-like President and Saturday Night Live's Phil Hartman has an amusing cameo.
The movie presents a nice conceit, but it's too low-budget and small-scale to be convincing. And the AIDS analogy is rather specious. Sci-fi generally seems to work better in lurid B-movie treatments like, for instance, Hardware or The Road Warrior. When it comes to carrying messages, this genre isn't especially good at weight-bearing. Its appeal is flash not substance.
Violence and nudity make Daybreak unsuitable for children.
ABC (Sun., May 9, 9 p.m. ET)
B
Jimmy Smits and Marg Helgenberger star in this two-parter based on the novel by the Titan of Terror. They're writers, he a fading poet with a drinking problem, she an aspiring juvenile-novel author. But there's an evil spirit with a bright green aura lurking in the pine woods near the small Maine town where they reside. It slowly begins to engulf and twist the townsfolk, women and children first. Soon half the inhabitants are inspired to build a variety of bizarre glowing contraptions. At first these Rube Goldberg gizmos are designed to sort the mail or make the perfect BLT sandwich. Then they grow sinister.
Director John Power establishes good pacing, as the mounting suspense alternates with scenes of banal normalcy and campy humor. The action is spread around on a solid supporting cast that includes Joanna Cassidy, E.G. Marshall, Allyce Beasley, John Ashton, Cliff DeYoung, Robert Carradine and Traci Lords.
The thriller is like an attenuated, more pastoral version of the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But once it gets its hooks in you, you'll be back for the conclusion the following night.
CBS (Tues., May 11, 9 p.m. ET)
C+
In this fact-based film, Mel Harris and Melissa Gilbert play dedicated cops in Long Beach, Calif., who are subjected to rampant sexual harassment within the department.
Harris, on the K-9 squad, is married to another cop (Cotter Smith, her real-life husband). Gilbert, a patrol officer with many commendations, has an affair with a lecherous married sergeant (Peter Onorati) that ends messily. On the job, they're both subjected to insults, crude behavior, intimidation and comments straight out of Andrew Dice Clay's act. "You on the rag again?" says one fellow officer. "You got short cycles."
The movie, whose executive producer is Andrew Lack (recently appointed president of NBC News), makes its point amply in the first half hour, then keeps piling on the abuse. Compared to these ladies, Job had a day at the beach. The best drama is in the culminating courtroom scenes with Holland Taylor playing the women's lawyer. But that comes too late in the game.
>EVERYTHING BUT OPERA
TELEVISION OFFERS A SUPERABUN-dance of musical styles this week. On Wednesday, May 5, PBS has a triple-header (check local listings). A Beatles Songbook brings together motley talents (Dr. John, Kathy Mattea, Los Lobos and more) to perform Fab Four faves. It's followed by Let the Good Times Roll, a celebration of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, garnished with spicy performances by Buckwheat Zydeco, the Indigo Girls and many others. Then PBS's new jazz series, Club Date, kicks off with sublime saxophonist Frank Morgan in concert. That same night over on MTV, Rod Stewart makes his now obligatory appearance on Unplugged (10 p.m. FT). One highlight is Rod's irresistibly moving version of Tom Waits's "Tom Traubert's Blues." On Thursday, May 6 (8 p.m. FT), CBS presents The Women of Country, during which young bloods such as Trisha Yearwood, Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Suzy Bogguss pay musical tribute to foremothers including Kitty Wells and Patsy Montana. Finally, on Sunday, May 9 (10 p.m. ET), Fox delivers Aretha Franklin: Duets, in which Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Smokey Robinson, Gloria Estefan and Rod Stewart join the Queen of Soul onstage in various permutations to sing classics like "Chain of Fools."
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!
