A
Playing astronaut James Lovell in 1995's Apollo 13 must have ignited Tom Hanks's booster engines. The two-time Oscar winner (Forrest Gump, Philadelphia) is the executive producer and Alistair Cooke-style host of this $65 million, special-effects-laden, 12-hour miniseries (two episodes air back-to-back each week) dramatizing the race to the moon—from 1961, when JFK first proposed landing an American there by the end of the decade, to 1972, when the last two astronauts cavorted on the lunar surface.
But while this ambitious project is one giant leap for an actor, it's also a small misstep. The opener, which Hanks himself directed, bogs down with tedious "Can we do this?" conferences between NASA bureaucrats and White House policy wonks (including Lateline's Al Franken). And the episode's big payoff—the 1961 flight of Alan Shepard (Ted Levine), the first American in space—is played so low-key that, as drama, it's weightless.
Part 2, however, soars as it recreates the harrowing Apollo 1 launch-test fire that killed three astronauts in 1967 and candidly details the postmortem bickering and finger-pointing that nearly grounded the space program. Dan Lauria (The Wonder Years' dyspeptic dad) is effective as gruff NASA honcho James Webb, and next week, in Part 3, Chicago Hope's Mark Harmon does a dashing turn (reminiscent of 1983's The Right Stuff) as Apollo 7's gutsy commander, Wally Schirra, while he preps for the first manned Apollo flight. Even more compelling is a May 10 episode (directed by Sally Field) on the astronauts' wives, who quietly endured their men's absences and, in some cases, their infidelities.
CBS (Sun., April 5, 9 p.m. ET)
D
Could there be a television character more exasperating than the cutesy Ally McBeal? You bet. Meet Rose Cleardon, the runaway wife played by Dana Delany (China Beach) in this quirky TV-movie adaptation of Ann Patchett's 1992 novel. Early one morning in 1981, Rose leaves her nice, nebbishy husband (John Putch) because, as she tells the family priest, "I don't love him." She hasn't even informed her spouse that she's two months pregnant by him. To ensure that he never find her, Rose flees from the couple's California digs to a remote Kentucky home for unwed mothers run by an order of Catholic nuns (including Family's Sada Thompson as Rose's stout confidante). Soon the home's studly yet chaste handyman, Son (Clancy Brown), is proposing marriage, unaware Rose is already wed. Nevertheless, she says yes; then, a few years later, she lets Son and her daughter live alone in the house they've inherited from an eccentric neighbor (Ellen Burstyn) while Rose, without explanation, moves into Son's old cottage just down the hill.
At this point your humble reviewer was banging his head against the wall, wailing, "What is this woman's problem?" Delany's chilly, remote portrayal reveals nothing of the demons that drive Rose. What she needs, obviously, is a good therapist—or else a cathartic session with Oprah Winfrey.
ABC (Sun., April 5, 9 p.m. ET)
B
Sliders, which slid off the FOX network last summer and onto the Sci-Fi Channel (new episodes start June 8), clearly inspired this intriguing TV movie about a burned-out L.A. surgeon seeking a fresh start in a parallel universe. "I don't have the life that I want," complains Dr. Ben Creed (Tate Donovan), whose old girlfriend Melody (Grace Phillips) is happily wed to someone else. Fortunately, Ben's physicist pal Emmett (Matt Craven) has invented a gateway to an alternate Earth, a kinder, cleaner world where cars are community property, crime is nonexistent, and Elvis has not left the building. On his first visit, accompanied by another friend (ER's Abraham Benrubi), Ben discovers that his counterpart was killed in a war with Libya, leaving behind a widow—the mirror image of Melody—who hasn't remarried. So who can blame the guy for crossing over again and pretending to be her mistakenly presumed dead spouse? You don't have to be a Sliders fan—The Twilight Zone will do—to figure out that this idyllic otherworld has a sinister underside. Back in our world, it still makes for good, creepy fun.
FOX (Mondays, 8:30 p.m. ET)
C-
Milo Doucette (Duane Martin) is a cocky young producer of TV commercials in Chicago; Robyn Buckley (Independence Day's Vivica A. Fox) is a suave, sexy businesswoman newly arrived from New York City. You can tell that this couple's blind date—arranged by Milo's doofus buddy and office mate Sam (Jon Cryer)—is going to be a disaster when they start arguing about The Jeffersons. He: "I refuse to believe that Weezie was only with George for his money." She: "Then what was it? The free dry cleaning? The deluxe apartment in the sky?"
Cute, but from there the plot gets wheezy; the humor, sleazy. At work the next day, Milo discovers that Robyn has just been hired as his new boss by his old boss Jack (Elliott Gould), who has decided to step aside. Hearing about their date, Jack's first question is, "Ya bag her?"
There are also jokes about condoms and diaphragms as well as men who drive Porsches. (They have small penises, Robyn tells Milo, who owns a sporty car. Guess which make?) Fox, the movie actress, has the makings of a sitcom star. Too bad FOX, the network, has cast her in this ill-conceived smutcom. Martin (Scream 2), despite a snappy delivery, appears to be impersonating J.J. from Good Times. Cryer, who was so good in FOX's 1995-96 two-guys-and-a-girl comedy Partners, is wasted. She's like a grungier David Spade, the office wiseass on NBC's Just Shoot Me, which is precisely what Cryer's eyes seem to be pleading in most scenes.
Lifetime (Mon., April 6, 9 p.m. ET)
A
The survivor of the title, Priscilla Salyers, was an office manager working at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the morning of April 19, 1995. As dramatized here, her life has hardly been ideal. Priscilla (Picket Fences' Kathy Baker) and her husband, Roy (Ray Baker, no relation), an out-of-work CEO, argue at breakfast over his slim job prospects and growing estrangement from the couple's two sons, ages 15 and 20. Then, at 9:02 a.m., Priscilla's world collapses. Buried alive under tons of rubble from a bomb blast that kills 168 others on that grisly day, she is miraculously dug out by rescue workers, emerging with three broken ribs, a punctured lung and a haunted soul. Mourning her slain colleagues, yet unable to fathom what she calls the meaningless evil that destroyed them, Priscilla has recurring nightmares of the faceless bomber. As she later tells Roy, "How can anybody who wasn't there ever understand?" This affecting docudrama succeeds in helping viewers understand the aftermath, at least, thanks largely to Baker's heartfelt performance as Priscilla. Convalescing at home, she explains to her sensitive younger son, "Honey, I hurt, and I'm gonna scream, and you're just gonna have to deal with it." In a way, that sums up the pluck of many of the Oklahoma City survivors.
Terry Kelleher is on vacation.
>Charlie Schlatter
ELDER IDOL
BACK IN THE EARLY '90S, WHEN CHARLIE Schlatter had the title role on NBC's Ferris Bueller, he was downright hip. "It seemed like any guy wearing a Metallica T-shirt would see me and yell, 'Yo, Ferris!' " he says. "I had to sign autographs on something they held up with their black-nail-polished fingers." These days, though, as a star on Diagnosis Murder, Schlatter is performing for a more mature audience. Since CBS cannily scheduled the series against Seinfeld, Diagnosis's legions of viewers over 50 have made it a Top 20 Nielsen's winner and Schlatter a poster boy for the Gray Panther set. "My fans are very polite," says Schlatter, 31, who lives with his wife, Colleen, and 6-month-old daughter, Julia, in L.A. "They say things like, 'You look thin. Are you getting enough to eat?' "
Actually, Schlatter almost didn't get to play Dr. Jesse Travis on Diagnosis. When the network was looking for a replacement for Scott Baio in 1995, executives wanted a Baywatch-type stud. But series star Dick Van Dyke lobbied for Schlatter. "Charlie has this great funny bone with perfect comic timing," says Van Dyke. Since joining Van Dyke's team of sleuthing doctors, Schlatter has come to appreciate his older fans. "When I go to my grandparents' house, and they have friends visiting who are terminally ill, you can totally lift their spirits," he says.
So what, then, if Schlatter's contemporaries don't recognize him? At the gym recently, he told a young man about his TV job. "The next day," says Schlatter, "I saw him, and he said, 'I told my mother I work out next to the guy from Diagnosis Murder. She just loves you! Oh, and she says you need a haircut.' "
- Contributors:
- Craig Tomashoff.
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!
