Ricky Nelson has a small but nonetheless permanent niche in the great hall of pop culture. He played a sitcom version of himself, along with his father, mother and brother, on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, the long-running series that once epitomized the Eisenhower-era American family. He became an overnight singing sensation while still on the show—was, apparently, the first star ever to be blessed and cursed with that magical phrase combining puberty and deity, "teen idol." Before he died in a plane crash in 1985, he weathered a long, serious career lull, but he left behind a good number of hits, including "Hello Mary Lou" and "Garden Party." Plus, he was the father of Nelson, the blond, identical-twin rock act.
All that, and the best VH1 can do is this amateur-night made-for-TV movie, a "Ricky Nelson for Dummies" that serves up only the bare bones of his life. Jamey Sheridan, as powerful Papa Ozzie, looks more like Bing Crosby. Sara Botsford (mother Harriet) and Anthony Lemke (brother David) are utter blanks. And Gregory Calpakis's Ricky is a dazed simpleton. Is this the sort of junk bio today's reigning Ricky will get at the end of the road?
Bottom Line: Unadmirable Nelson
UPN (Mon., Aug. 23, 8:30 p.m. ET)
Since he was 13, Jaleel White has been known throughout the land as Steve Urkel, the über-nerd he played for nine seasons on Family Matters. Grown Ups, a new vehicle for the now 22-year-old star, will not change that fact. White is perfectly acceptable—low-key, easygoing, nice—as J. Calvin Frazier, a young man recently promoted to regional vice president of a corrugated box factory in Chicago. But at this point there's nothing else to say about Grown Ups (which after this premiere episode will regularly air on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET). It's a completely routine ensemble comedy.
The show gets rolling by introducing a group of characters who include Calvin's new female roommate, his best buddy, the buddy's wife, an old crush from high school and her vain, dapper lawyer boyfriend. The lawyer is played by Bumper Robinson with a smoothness and lightness of touch that make White seem, alas, a bit of an Urkel after all.
Bottom Line: Not likely to grow on you
Fox Family Channel (Sun., Aug. 22, 8 p.m. ET)
The world by now is full of women with M.B.A.s and corporate jobs, but in the domain of popular entertainment, it is still better to be a governess with an unmarried boss. Jane Eyre wouldn't cut it at Microsoft.
Thinking she is being hired for an entry-level copy-room job, a fresh business school grad (Heidi Noelle Lenhart) finds herself looking after two bratty children. Their father, a globe-trotting executive (Gregory Harrison), takes them all to Europe for the summer while he masterminds a merger. The au pair soon tames the kids, but then she must do battle with the father's resentful gold-digger fiancée (Jane Sibbett). As family entertainment it's not a bad diversion. Better this than Fran Drescher.
Bottom Line: Nanny and the professional
Showtime (Sun., Aug. 22, 8 p.m. ET)
Show of the week
A once-affluent, middle-aged woman, left without resources after a divorce, swallows her pride and takes a job as maid to an imperious, far more affluent, likewise middle-aged woman. Naturally, Sally Field, with her scrappiness and adorable pout, plays the humbled new servant willing to take her lumps. Judy Davis—so dangerously brittle she might as well be made of crystal and perched on the edge of a wobbly coffee table—is the rhymes-with-rich who keeps pummeling her.
They play off each other beautifully and make this silly melodrama directed by Susan Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan) a highly enjoyable waste of time. Davis totters around unhappily in expensive clothes. Field falls for a local artist with a Hemingway beard (he eventually shaves). Davis's spoiled, neglected daughter comes home and causes trouble. After endless ups and downs—wouldn't you know?—the women wind up as close as sisters. Climate leaves us with the interesting notion that the best therapy for a rich, unhappy lady is to hire a rich, unhappy domestic.
Bottom Line: Thanks to its stars, a well-maid soap
Comedy Central (Thursdays, 10:30 p.m. ET)
Having watched the first six episodes of this limited-run sitcom, I can only clap my little hands with glee that I'll never have to watch it again.
Stuck in a dead-end job at a new-media firm, 34-year-old Frank, played by Stan Cahill with the look of a puppy having trouble fathoming a command, impulsively concludes that the thing to do is move to Japan and teach English. The series follows him as, bit by bit, he goes about quitting the job, telling the parents, dumping the girlfriend. This banal plot has been tricked up to an almost grotesque degree with rapid-fire visual gags and effects that convey Frank's muddlement: He turns into a cartoon hero, fragments into multiple versions of his indecisive self and is chided by the toaster he wants to unload in a yard sale. Imagine Oliver Stone coming off Natural Born Killers and directing Seinfeld.
Meanwhile, another Comedy Central sitcom now in repeats deserves brief notice. Strangers with Candy, in which a 46-year-old woman starts over as a high school freshman after 32 years in the gutter, is sick, cruel, weird—appallingly funny.
Bottom Line: F is for Frank
Terry Kelleher is on vacation.
>Sunday, Aug. 22 YOU KNOW MY NAME TNT (8 p.m. ET) Really? "We've met before? Sam Elliott plays a marshal up against gangsters in 1920s Oklahoma.
Monday, Aug. 23 CRUCIBLE OF EMPIRE PBS (9 p.m. ET) Edward James Olmos narrates a documentary on that imperialist spree, the Spanish-American War.
Tuesday, Aug. 24 MISS TEEN USA CBS (9 p.m. ET) Fifty-one girls compete, with MTV's Carson Daly as host. He'll want to put this on his résumé.
Wednesday, Aug. 25 BIRTH OF THE GIANTS The Learning Channel (9 p.m. ET) Did dinosaurs conquer the world from North America? That's one theory explored here.
Thursday, Aug. 26 FRASIER NBC (9 p.m. ET) In back-to-back repeats, Frasier and Niles collaborate on a dinner, then compete at an auction.
Friday, Aug. 27 PRIVATE PARTS USA (9 p.m. ET) Howard Stern exposes himself, so to speak, in his autobiographical '97 film.
Saturday, Aug. 28 EVER AFTER HBO (9 p.m. ET) Drew Barrymore is a Renaissance Cinderella in this charming 1998 movie.
>Hugh Hefner
Contrary to a lot of critics, Hugh Hefner doesn't think there's too much sex on TV. "We live in a Playboy world now," says the magazine's iconoclastic founder. "Technology has brought sex out into the open. You can't put it back in the closet," says Hefner, one of many experts interviewed on the documentary miniseries The History of Sex (Aug. 16-20 at 10 p.m. ET on the History Channel).
"We'd be much poorer without sex," adds Hef. "I certainly would be." He needn't worry. Amicably separated since 1998 from his second wife, Kimberly, 37, a former Playmate of the Year who lives next door to the L.A. Playboy mansion with their sons, Marston, 9, and Cooper, 7, Hefner remains virile at 73. Yes, he admits, he uses Viagra. "I'm dating twins," he says, laughing. "I have to." In fact, college students Sandy and Mandy Bentley, 21, share Hef with another girlfriend, actress Brande Broderick, 25. (He has son David, 43, a computer programmer, and daughter Christie, 46, Playboy's chairman and CEO, from his first marriage to college sweetheart Millie.)
Besides planning his annual New Year's Eve pajama party at the mansion, Hefner has begun seriously mulling who should play him in the film biography that director Ron Howard's company plans to make. Two names are on his mind: Rupert Everett and Nicolas Cage. Hefner, who was raised in a Methodist family in Chicago, worries that Cage may be too exotic for the part. "He's wonderful at eccentrics," says Hefner, "but is he a midwestern boy?"
- Contributors:
- Kelly Carter.
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!
