Four years after coming out as gay and fleeing to L.A., Butch Gamble (John Goodman) is back in his Ohio hometown, hoping to mend fences. But why? His estranged relations have to be the most repellent sitcom family since the Bundys of Married...with Children. Butch's dad, Bill (Orson Bean), is a crotchety homophobe who makes Rudy of Survivor look saintly. Mom Joan (Anita Gillette) isn't much better. "I knew we shouldn't have sent him to that wrestling camp!" she laments. Butch's bitter ex-wife, Elizabeth (Mo Gaffney), is remarried to a wuss; his grown son Charlie (Greg Pitts) barely speaks to him. Only sister Pamela (Joely Fisher), a slutty single mom with two bratty kids, will take him in. By the second episode Butch and Charlie are bonding and the focus is on Bill's guilt over a Korean War infidelity. As for the theme of the gay prodigal son, well, Will & Grace this show isn't. It's shrill and graceless, the actors screeching their lines at each other. Only Goodman stands out—in more ways than one. He has bulked up noticeably since playing Roseanne's tubby hubby, Dan. And no one else in this cast can match his boisterous good-ol'-boy ebullience.
Bottom Line: A decent Goodman sitcom is hard to find
CBS (Sun., Nov. 12, Wed., Nov. 15, 9 p.m. ET)
Show of the week
When author-screenwriter Norman Mailer and journalist-director Lawrence Schiller last teamed up on TV, the result was 1982's The Executioner's Song, a powerful miniseries about convicted killer Gary Gilmore. American Tragedy, the duo's latest collaboration, isn't nearly as good. Still, as a gossipy, fly-on-the-wall re-creation of the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, this briskly paced two-parter will keep you hooked till the end. Its premise: Simpson's "Dream Team" of lawyers spent as much time fighting among themselves as they did defending him. As Johnnie Cochran (Ving Rhames) and Carl Douglas (Darryl Alan Reed) shrewdly play the race card, Robert Shapiro (Ron Silver) furtively pushes for a plea bargain; and F. Lee Bailey (Christopher Plummer) comes across as an inept publicity hound. Prosecutors Marcia Clark (Diana LaMar) and Chris Darden (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) are barely glimpsed—as is O.J. himself, a sinisterly shadowy figure who's mostly heard ranting on a speakerphone to his lawyers. No wonder he sued to block this production.
Bottom Line: A guilty pleasure
NBC (Sun., Nov. 12, Mon., Nov. 13, 9 p.m. ET)
And in the beginning of this tedious four-hour miniseries based on the Old Testament, your reviewer beheld classy actors like Martin Landau (as Abraham), Jacqueline Bisset (Sarah) and Diana Rigg (Rebekah) wilting under old-age makeup and uttering stilted, by-the-Book dialogue. But lo, in Part 2, which follows Joseph (Third Watch's Eddie Cibrian) into Egypt and Moses (Once and Again's Billy Campbell) back out again, there appeareth a plague of tacky special effects. Tackiest of all: The Red Sea parts like sliced Velveeta, which just might make thee long for the campy grandeur of Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments.
Bottom Line: Holy unsatisfactory Terry Kelleher is on temporary leave.
>Sunday, Nov. 12 BOYS DON'T CRY Cinemax (10 p.m. ET) Hilary Swank won a Best Actress Oscar for her gender-bending turn in this 1999 fact-based drama.
Monday, Nov. 13 ALLY McBEAL FOX (9 p.m. ET) It's new guy Robert Downey Jr. for the defense when Ally (Calista Flockhart) gets sued for libel.
Tuesday, Nov. 14 DAG NBC (9:30 p.m. ET) That's short for David Alan Grier, whose new sitcom casts him as a Secret Service agent guarding First Lady Delta Burke.
Wednesday, Nov. 15 BETTE CBS (8 p.m. ET) To show her acting chops, Bette hams it up as Hamlet's mother, Gertrude.
Thursday, Nov. 16 WILL & GRACE NBC (9 p.m. ET) He's got you, babe: Jack (Sean Hayes) gets to meet his idol, guest star Cher.
Friday. Nov. 17 THE BEATLES REVOLUTION ABC (8 p.m. ET) A two-hour retrospective on how the lads from Liverpool rocked the world.
Saturday, Nov. 18 FOR LOVE OR COUNTRY HBO (9 p.m. ET) Subtitled The Arturo Sandoval Story, it's the true tale of a Cuban trumpeter (Andy Garcia) who defected to the U.S. in 1990.
>Alison Elliott
The scenes in The Miracle Worker where Annie Sullivan struggles to teach blind, deaf Helen Keller sign language required a surprising amount of sheer physicality. "We were comparing bruises every day," says Elliott, 30, who plays Sullivan, a teacher, to costar Hallie Kate Eisenberg's Keller. "I didn't mean to, but once I popped her in the face."
Elliott and Eisenberg, 8, best known as the sweet-faced Pepsi spokesgirl, endured a few bumps but learned sign language in the process. "It felt like having a secret code," says Elliott, who starred in 1997's Wings of the Dove. "Plus it was nice to talk behind people's backs in front of them."
This version of The Miracle Worker, an ABC movie scheduled to air Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. ET, is the third to chronicle the struggles of Sullivan and her student. Elliott watched the 1962 original starring Oscar-winners Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke ("I was impressed") and suspects the world will see many more Miracles in years to come. "It's one of the best roles a person can play," says the San Francisco native. "I hope they remake it again 10 more times."
- Contributors:
- Liza Hamm.
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!
