We'll find out this fall. ABC will offer its usual Saturday afternoon schedule of regional college games. But for 11 weeks, ABC will also present a menu of games via pay-per-view cable. This may seem an odd marketing concept, like trying to sell sand at the beach. After all, no major team sport gets the saturation TV coverage college football does. It probably won't generate big bucks for the network, for the same reason NBC is experiencing such meager sales of its Olympic Triplecast offering on pay-per-view in the weeks before the Barcelona Games: Why would anyone pay for something they can already see so much of for free?
USA (Wed., July 15, 9 P.M. ET)
B-
A more descriptive title would have been The Hand That Rocks the Rolodex. Linda Purl plays a psycho secretary who is not only ruthlessly efficient but also just plain ruthless. A thwarted executive trainee, she goes to work for newly promoted corporate go-getter Heather Locklear and slowly begins executing a devious takeover of Locklear's life.
The result is a decent office thriller that would have been improved a bit had Locklear and Purl switched roles. Come to think of it, it could have been improved a lot if Purl had donned a wig and played both roles.
Hey, wait a minute. Isn't Murphy Brown always looking for a good secretary?
Syndicated (Check local listings)
D+
On a fishing trip in the Poconos recently, I passed a number of rural roadhouses, each one of which seemed to have a sign outside promoting its karaoke night. Now the barroom singing phenomenon, which started in Japan, has its own TV show.
Gee, this karaoke thing is bigger than I thought. It's also more atrocious.
This program is an amateur showcase in which people who are identified as waiters, dental assistants and the like sing well-known pop songs to taped musical backings. The host is Jon Bauman, better known as Bowzer of Sha Na Na, a guy who used to be a bad Fonzie imitator and now is a bad Bob Saget imitator. The quality of the contestants ranges from Gong Show reject all the way up to not-ready-for-Star Search. It's taped at Universal Studios in Orlando in front of a crowd of dazed tourists who were no doubt lured into the amphitheater with those three magic words: "It's air-conditioned inside."
Still, this is a step or two up from those lip-synch shows like Putting on the Hits or MTV's Lip Service. A few more steps up and it'll be in the basement.
TBS (Sun., July 19, 9 P.M. ET)
A
National Geographic Explorer presents this Academy Award—nominated 1989 documentary, which wonderfully weaves together NASA footage from nine U.S. Apollo missions from 1968 to '72, when we turned all our resources toward putting men on the moon and succeeded six times.
Like Bud Greenspan's Olympic panegyrics, this film from director Al Reinert uses great camera work (laboriously assembled from 6 million feet of NASA footage in the vaults of the Johnson Space Center) and frequent slow motion to create a stirring and epic tribute. The film is scored by Brian Eno and employs commentary from 13 of the 24 astronauts who made this historic round-trip—although none of them is identified as he speaks.
Was the Apollo program worth the $42 billion price tag? Considering that it resulted in no crucial scientific breakthroughs and that we have subsequently backed off manned exploration of space, the answer is probably no. But the program did result in this priceless film, which is also available on video.
ABC (Mon., July 20, 10 P.M. ET)
C-
The summer wouldn't be complete without one really ludicrous, entirely implausible action series. Here it is! Rick Springfield plays Christopher Chance, a mysterious do-gooder who jets around the world in a bat-winged Hovercraft. When someone is in grave danger, Springfield assumes his or her identity and steps into the firing line. It's all done in a democratic fashion. "I charge 10 percent of a year's salary," he tells a client. "That goes whether you're a busboy or the King of England."
In its premise, this is like those old Mission: Impossible episodes where Martin Landau would impersonate the doctor of some banana republic dictator in order to lure the despot across the border where he could be arrested. Except it's not as clever.
The dialogue is truly dopey. When Springfield tells his pilot (SaMi Chester) to get the plane ready, he says, "Heat her up, Jeff. Let's go." "Where to?" "I don't care. Just get me up in the clouds where I can think." Not a bad idea. The plane is pretty cool. But when the action moves back down on the ground, this show is for the birds.
Next weekend, Human Target moves into its scheduled slot on Saturdays at 9 P.M. ET.
Lifetime (Tues., July 21, 9 P.M. ET)
C
Even the title reminds you of those navel-gazing feminist self-discovery movies from the 1970s, the kind that generally starred Jill Clayburgh or Susan Anspach.
This movie, based on Robert Anderson's 1979 novel, presents the mid-life crisis of a lawyer (Tom Skerritt) with a wife (Blythe Danner) in the country and a married mistress (Roma Downey) in the city. The plot thins as his enthusiasm for both his work and his relationships starts to dim. Then Skerritt takes a summer teaching position that provides him with just what he needs: another romantic entanglement (with Julianne Phillips).
Besides being anachronistic, the movie is also sedate, self-conscious and talky (Danner tells Skerritt the morning after asking for a separation: "And the lovemaking was your proof, reassurance to yourself and to me that you still love me"). Viewing the movie is like watching someone else play a long, senseless parlor game. Skerritt stars in one of next fall's more promising series: Picket Fences on CBS. Wait for that.
>A COUPLE OF CABLE CUTUPS
TWO MORDANT COMEDIAN-ACTORS HAVE PAY-CABLE SPECIALS THIS WEEK. IN HBO's Sandra After Dark (Fri., July 17, midnight) Sandra Bernhard plays the bitchy hostess of a ritzy, risqué Hollywood party, mingling with such guests as Roseanne Arnold, Theresa Russell, Louie Anderson and Timothy Leary. Sandra slinks around in silk pajamas in this twisted take on Hugh Hefner's silly 1969 series Playboy After Dark, as singer Tom Jones and comic Rip Taylor perform, making this soiree sort of an R-rated sleep-over camp. Hardly more conventional is Martin Mull's Talent Takes a Holiday on Showtime (Sat., July 18, 10 PM. ET). It's a cheesy spoof of variety shows from Jackie Gleason's to Garrison Keillor's, with such terrible acts as a Bavarian whistler and an elderly female stand-up comic from Minnesota telling incomprehensible jokes about her husband. Neither of these shows is very funny, but both are terribly strange.
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!
