NBC (Fridays, 10 P.M. ET)
Grade: Pass
In this supernatural anthology series from Wes Craven, Lindsay (Mancuso FBI) Frost and Jack (Dynasty) Coleman work at a spooky, moveable diner mysteriously presided over by Robert Englund, who played Freddy Kreuger in Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Disoriented patrons who wander into this greasy-spoon limbo unwittingly get what they wish for, which often turns out to be bad news indeed.
Imaginative but unconvincing, the show is no Twilight Zone. It is, however, refreshingly nonlinear. Throw open a door, and you can walk out into an alley one time and an asteroid belt in deep space the next. Wander into the ladies' room, and you may suddenly find yourself in a shooting gallery as one of the cardboard cutout targets.
It's dicey to assign a grade, because the loose concept means the quality may vary enormously from week to week, depending on the script. I'll have to shift to Pass/Fail.
CBS (Saturdays, 10 P.M. ET)
B+
What's not to like about this new series? It features two irresistible actors playing the long, liver-spotted arm of the law in the Utah resort town of Twilight. Richard (Comes a Horseman) Farnsworth, the silver fox with the warm, knowing eyes, plays the sheriff given to sage crime-scene deductions: "It wasn't no country person done this. A country person mighta took a gun, ax, hammer, something he could get a good hold of. But arsenic—that's a city person. That's doing it with gloves on."
His crusty, cagey deputy is played by oatmeal-loving Wilford Brimley, with his walrus mustache and spurs that jingle-jangle. He's also given to folksy clichés like "Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while."
Don't scrutinize the clues too closely or they don't hold up. Plausibility isn't a strong suit. That's because beneath the casting coup, this is essentially moldy old formula TV. Think of it as Murder, He Drawled and enjoy the stars.
PBS (Sun., March 1, 9 P.M. ET)
B+
This Masterpiece Theatre airing on two consecutive Sundays is an evocative mounting of the novel by George Eliot, the pseudonym of 19th-century author Mary Ann Evans.
To describe this as a pastoral tale of a carpenter's star-crossed love for a dairymaid would be an injustice. This is no petrified period piece. It's like a Victorian version of The Bold and the Beautiful, in which a handsome, high-cheekboned young cast (Iain Glen, a dark-dyed Patsy Kensit, James Wilby and Susannah Harker) play out a passionate parable of romance, temptation and destiny against a moral background of severe censures.
Discovery (Sun., March 1, 9 P.M. ET)
A-
This documentary lifts a rock, revealing the growing white supremacist movement in the U.S., and the bugs underneath don't even have the sense to scum out of sight. They just stand and deliver their benighted venom.
The focus is on a 1986 Michigan conclave of the Aryan Nation, a small splinter group. There is footage of George Lincoln Rockwell, who founded the American Nazi Party in the '50s, and of David Duke. There are also snippets from various propaganda videos. The white supremacists weave a remarkable fabric of arcane lingo, virulent hatred, persecution complexes and crackpot convictions: for instance, that thousands of specially trained Mongolians are massing in the Yucatan; that Jerry Falwell is a Jew: that the Holocaust never happened. (The title of the documentary, released theatrically last year, comes from the neo-Nazis off-slated tenet that a distinguishing characteristic of the chosen white race is that only they are able to blush.)
The filmmakers present these poor souls with a simple ironic distance that makes the hobgoblins of their little minds seem as silly as they are lightening.
CBS (Sun., March 1, 9 P.M. ET)
A-
Over lunch, a successful malpractice attorney tells his wile of 16 sears that he's moving out: "It's not working now, Bets. You know that. You criticize everything I do or say. You're clearly not happy. Why would you want me to stay?" "Because you owe me," she hisses, and her baleful glare is a clear indication that this separation isn't going to be amicable.
Since Family Ties, Meredith Baxter has made a health living playing unhinged women in TV movies. All of them pale in comparison to her bravura performance as the title character in this smartly detailed, fact-based film. Baxter's behavior grows increasingly volatile as her husband (Stephen Collins) grows closer to his 19-year-old office assistant (Michelle Johnson). (In reality, Broderick, after her first trial ended with a hung jury, was recently convicted of killing her former husband and his second wife.)
NBC (Man., March 2, 9 P.M. ET)
C
And what a past it is. Pamela (Kindergarten Cop) Reed plays a suburban supermom, Dee Johnson, with an affectionate husband (The A-Team's Dwight Sehultz), two happy sons and a bustling real estate business. Then one day federal marshals ring the doorbell, slap cuds on Johnson and cart her oil to jail. Turns out she is an escaped convict who had been serving time in a West Virginia prison for armed robbery.
As she explains matters to her shocked family, we flash back through her transformation from Bonnie-and-Clyde bandita to Betty Crocker.
Unfortunately, the movie wants to have it both ways: tell a shocking tale and present Reed as a helpless victim, forced into a life of crime by her first husband (Richard Linebeck), a trailer-park yahoo. We're left with a tabloid story that doesn't have the stomach to get down and dirty.
CBS (Tues., March 3, 9 P.M. ET)
C-
Patty Duke and David (Falcon Crest) Selby play a couple who finally build their dream house, but then all kinds of creepy things start happening. To make a long story short (ah, if only the makers of this film had done the same!), it turns out they're reliving atop an old cemetery.
How do they get away with ripping off the plot of Poltergeist? Well, this movie is based on the real-life experiences of Ben and Jean Williams, a Crosby, Tex., couple who cowrote the 1991 book The Black Hope Horror. The chills and spills are not very gripping, but the subject mailer should attract the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night crowd. I don't know about you, but if it were my house, within 10 minutes of the first ghostly prank I'd be calling the real estate agent from my room at the local Holiday Inn.
>A TALE OF TWO CARTOONS
PRIME TIME IS LOOKING MORE ANIMATED THESE days—literally. Merely for the fun of playing Name That Celebrity Voice. CBS's new cartoon series, Fish Police (Fridays, 8:30 P.M. ET), has it all over ABC's Capitol Critters (Saturdays, 8 P.M. ET). After all, Fish boasts John Ritter, Ed Asner, Robert Guillaume, JoBeth Williams, Buddy Hackett and many others speaking for its cartoon characters each week. With Critters you get only Neil Patrick Harris, Dorian Harewood and comedian Bobcat Goldthwait.
Fish's underwater play on the hard-boiled detective genre is the funnier, better drawn of the two. But that's not saying much. Capitol Critters, the story of rats and mice living in the wallboards of the White House, can't decide if it's a bang-zoom kiddie comedy or a grown-up allegory about politics, racism and other issues. The result is a terribly tepid mess. Fish Grade: C+ Critters: D
>BIG BUCKS BASKETBALL CABLE'S PAY-PER-VIEW HAS A NEW WRINKLE ON Friday (Feb. 28, 9 P.M. KT, suggested price $19.95): a live, one-on-one basketball game between retired NBA greats Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 45, and Julius Erving, 42. In the prelims Nate Archibald goes up against George Gervin and Rick Barry, takes on Connie Hawkins. Some things argue against the event: (1) Basketball is a team game; one-on-one isn't that much fun to watch. (2) Hoop skills erode quickly, which is why Wilt Chamberlain's periodic threats to come back to the NBA have always been rather ludicrous. Still, pay-per-view is built on hype and curiosity, so I'll probably ante up, even though I think sweet-shooting Bob McAdoo, retired since 1986, could mop the floor with either of these guys.
CELINE’S INFERTILITY STRUGGLE: MY PRIVATE HEARTBREAK
Daily injections, painful tests and four failed IVF attempts: The singer, 41, reveal her dreams for a second baby. ‘I’ll try until it works’
