CBS (Wednesdays, 8 P.M. ET)
C
Redd Foxx and Delia Reese play a salty couple who are about to settle comfortably into retirement, when their grown daughter (Mariann Aalda) announces she's moving back in—with her three children.
At its best the show provides an opportunity for Foxx and Reese to string up some barbed-wire dialogue. He: "I wouldn't dare raise my hand at you, Victoria. It would leave my groin unprotected." She: "You better talk fast or lay down, old man, 'cause you dead." But most of the time this program is glaringly artificial. Foxx fans, stick with Sanford and Son reruns.
TNN (Saturdays, 9 P.M. ET)
C+
Leave it to the Nashville Network, that video hearth, to bring back the old Saturday-night variety show. The singing Statlers mosey through this impossibly bland yet soothing hour of music, comedy and nostalgia. It's Lawrence Welk meets Hee Haw.
As always with the Statlers, the skinny half, Phil Balsley and Jimmy Fortune, are harmonizing wallflowers. The heavier-set Harold and Don Reid—the only siblings in the misnomered Statler Brothers—carry the charisma, as well as the show's writing credits. And Harold really is a character. With his bullfrog voice, hooded eyes, Jerry Colonna mustache and cement-bag physique, he resembles a pro-wrestling villain.
Syndicated (check local listings)
C
It's like a high-school reunion where only the people you didn't like show up. Bumbling station manager Mr. Carlson (Gordon Jump), Herb the crass salesman (Frank Bonner) and nervous newsman Les (Richard Sanders) were lured back for this revival of the spunky '70s sitcom about an Ohio radio station. But there's no Jennifer (Loni Anderson), no Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) and no Andy (Gary Sandy). Dr. Fever (Howard Hesseman) turns up occasionally, but his ineffectual guest spots only confirm that WKRP's glory days are long gone.
Among the new cast members, the liveliest are Michael Des Barres and Kathleen Garrett as a morning DJ team with a troubled marriage. (She: "Have you looked in the mirror lately? Would you have sex with you?" He: "What other choice do I have, my darling?")
The acting and writing have slid downhill since the original show. But maybe that's fitting. Have you listened to the dreary donkey ride that is rock radio lately?
NBC (Sun., Oct. 13, 9 P.M. ET)
C+
Ever since that voyage to the bottom of the sea War and Remembrance, miniseries have become an increasingly endangered species. The stakes in money and time are just too high for the timid networks. One of the few miniseries you'll see this year is this glib pageant dedicated to the extraordinary life of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.
In this grim fairy tale based on C. David Heymann's best-selling, unauthorized biography, Roma Downey plays Jackie as a daddy-fixated beauty destined from birth for center stage. The mini is psychologically vague, establishing with certainty only that this famous woman was nearly paranoid in the way she protected her two children, even before the assassination. We see her irrationally suggesting to an aide that a huge wall be built around the White House because Caroline and John-John are too vulnerable when they play on the lawn. There are, though, some resonant scenes, as when Joe Kennedy (Josef Sommer), the family patriarch, grills his future daughter-in-law during her first visit to Hyannis Port. And the film avoids scandalmongering, though there is a gratuitous detour into the final days of Marilyn Monroe (Eve Gordon).
Considerably better costumed than cast, the mini costars Stephen (Tattinger's) Collins as John F. Kennedy, Tim Ransom as Bobby, Joss Ackland as Aristotle Onassis and William (Knots Landing) Devane as Jackie's rakish father, John Bouvier. (Devane played JFK in the 1974 TV movie The Missiles of October.)
The choice of Downey was perhaps inevitable because of the physical resemblance. But the Irish actress has a cramped, unplaceable accent and little empathetic power, though she has improved since her stunningly wooden American TV debut on daytime's One Life to Live. Downey's remoteness and the mini's sumptuous superficiality combine for a biographical fan dance that manages to show all and reveal nothing.
PBS (Sun., Oct. 13, 9 P.M. ET)
B
The season opener for Masterpiece Theatre, John le Carré's adaptation of his own novel is a double shock. First, it features Denholm Elliott playing one of le Carré's best-loved characters, spymaster George Smiley, a role long and memorably associated with Alec Guinness. Second, this Smiley isn't into espionage; while on sabbatical from British intelligence, he is talked by a former colleague (Glenda Jackson) into investigating a murder at a public school.
It's a tough adjustment watching a strange man playing a familiar character in unusual circumstances. But the transition is made easier by Gavin Millar's tightly woven direction and a fine cast, including Ronald Pickup, Matthew Scurfield, David Threlfall and Joss Ackland (also seen this week as Aristotle Onassis in A Woman Named Jackie). The mystery, which concludes the following Sunday, is full of quirky British pleasures. When, for instance, was the last time you heard a badger joke? (Wisconsin football fans, don't answer that.)
ABC (Sun., Oct 13, 9 P.M. ET)
D
Barry Bostwick and Joanna Kerns star in a fact-based film as a couple who move with their infant daughter to the Pacific Northwest to escape urban insanity. They open a remote motel, and their first customers (hello, fate) turn out to be a pair of deranged druggies (John Stamos and Chad Lowe), who hold them hostage.
Stamos (see story, page 83) has developed an appropriately malevolent look for the role, but his acting, and that of the rest of the cast, leaves much to be desired. The whole ugly episode is excruciating to watch, right through Kerns's experiencing Stockholm syndrome as she comes to sympathize with Lowe's fate. Well, now she knows how we feel. If people didn't bond with their tormentors, how else would Growing Pains have held on to an audience for seven seasons?
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!
