Show of the week
"And every mother's child is gonna spy/ To see if reindeer really know how to fly." So goes "The Christmas Song." But in this TV movie, we have a grownup attempting to prove that Prancer's sleigh-pulling is aerodynamically plausible. Though The Christmas Secret tends to belabor the theme that blind faith is a singular virtue, it has enough humor and goodwill to gain approval in the generous spirit of the season.
Jerry (Richard Thomas) is a zoology professor completing a scholarly paper on flying squirrels. The prof gets seriously distracted when a student presents him with a journal by a 19th-century scientist who disappeared after purportedly tracking airborne reindeer to a spot near the North Pole. Mindful of a boyhood encounter with such a creature, Jerry heads to the Arctic to see for himself, goes down in a plane crash and winds up a reluctant guest at Santa's village, where the movie has its most amusing moments. It turns out that the boss (Beau Bridges) prefers the familiar "Nick" to the formal "Santa Claus," displays presidential portraits as evidence of his political clout and resists the advice of his business-savvy children to manufacture violent video games.
The heart-tugging is a bit much as Jerry's wife (Maria Pitillo) and daughter (Taylor-Anne Reid) bravely refuse to give him up for dead, but nothing in The Christmas Secret will reduce your holiday cheer.
Bottom Line: Fairly merry
ABC (Fridays, 9:30 p.m. ET)
As I write, it appears that this low-rated comedy will need the luck of the Irish to survive. So don't tarry if you're of a mind to bond with the Madigan males: grandpappy Seamus (Roy Dotrice), newly arrived in Manhattan from the Emerald Isle; his son Ben (Gabriel Byrne), a recently separated architect warily rediscovering the dating scene; and Ben's son Luke (John C. Hensley), a teenager with girlfriends to spare.
Byrne (The Usual Suspects) is the ostensible main attraction of Madigan Men, but his gloomy mien ill-befits a sitcom star. On the other hand, Dotrice (who won a Tony acting with Byrne in Broadway's A Moon for the Misbegotten) seems to enjoy himself as an unabashedly stereotypical Irishman fond of pub society and "When I was a lad..." blarney. The rookie series showed promise in a funny episode that found Seamus attempting an Angela's Ashes-style memoir. Alas, Ben is burdened with a grating work partner (Grant Shaud) who's sexually desperate but ready with advice on how to handle the ladies.
Bottom Line: Foxy grandpa, marginal Men
Syndicated (check local listings)
Last month on Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, host Cybill Shepherd denied a tabloid report that she had desired to succeed Kathie Lee Gifford on Regis Philbin's morning program. But surely finding ego room next to Reege would have been better than fronting this ill-conceived talk show, which tries to fill five hours a week with battle-of-the-sexes babble loosely linked to the generalizations enshrined in the Mars/Venus books by John Gray (an executive producer and occasional guest).
I'm not sure which of Shepherd's habits is most annoying—fanning herself with note cards when the panel discussions grow sexy, sitting cross-legged as she delivers her "final thought" of the day (e.g., "Men are fire and women are water") or dropping in reminders that she was a big-time actress (Cybill, Moonlighting, The Last Picture Show) before stooping to her current gig. Shepherd still has star quality, but she's embarrassingly miscast in this role.
Bottom Line: Two planets to avoid
E! Entertainment Television (Sun., Dec. 17, 9 p.m. ET)
It's set on the Riviera and it stars a guy named French, so credit this comedy-mystery with a strong sense of place. But the laughs are widely spaced and the pace is awfully slow.
French Stewart of 3rd Rock from the Sun plays Nathan Booth, a struggling actor with a small part in a Cannes Film Festival entry called Hemingway Loved Me. Nathan arrives at the fest to find that his one scene has been snipped by the portly and pushy producers (Michael Lerner and Jay Brazeau), a brother team that vaguely resembles the Weinsteins of Miramax. At the opening ceremonies, he warms a seat next to Hemingway's female star (Bo Derek) and suddenly the glamor queen croaks. Soon—actually not soon enough—the film's male lead also turns up dead, followed by the director and the screenwriter. The police inspector (Karina Lombard) regards Nathan as a murder suspect—though she has sex with him—but her subordinate (Brian George) reveres him as the star of a short-lived American cop show that has achieved inexplicable success on French TV. Nathan's detective image is a decent comic idea, but the movie world in-jokes are rather flat. A late cameo by executive producer Merv Griffin will have you crying, "Cut!"
Bottom Line: No Golden Palm winner
>Sunday, Dec. 17 CHRISTMAS IN WASHINGTON TNT (8 p.m. ET) Sarah Michelle Gellar plays host, Marc Anthony sings, and Hillary Clinton shows how they deck the White House halls.
Monday, Dec. 18 THE FBI CELEBRITY FILES History Channel (8 p.m. ET) History's Mysteries peeks at J. Edgar Hoover's dirt on Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, et al.
Tuesday, Dec. 19 WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE ABC (8 p.m. ET) Win your tuition! Selected college students compete for the next three nights.
Wednesday, Dec. 20 PLAYING THE FIELD HBO (9 p.m. ET) An hour-long special looks at sex and sports.
Thursday, Dec. 21 A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS CBS (8 p.m. ET) Music (Faith Hill, Destiny's Child) mixes with true family stories in a celebration of adoption.
Friday, Dec. 22 BIOGRAPHY: PERRY COMO A&E (8 p.m. ET) Relax and review the life of a singer famous for keeping it casual.
Saturday, Dec. 23 HOLIDAY MUSIC SPECTACULAR FOX (9 p.m. ET) Tony Bennett and Jessica Simpson make Yule sounds from Miami Beach.
>Vanessa L. Williams
Vanessa Williams loves living large, it's looking large that's a problem. While shooting her new film, A Diva's Christmas Carol (Dec. 13 at 9 p.m. on VH1), in October, the actress-singer was still trying to shed the weight she had gained when carrying daughter Sasha (born last May), her child with husband and L.A. Laker basketball star Rick Fox, 31. "I usually put on 35 to 40 pounds each time I have a baby," says Williams, 37, who has three children—ages 7 to 13—with first husband Ramon Hervey. "I give myself nine months to get back to my prepregnancy shape, because it took me that long to get that big." And after four children, seeing those extra pounds can still be shocking. "Those are the moments that you look at yourself onscreen and go 'Aaagh!' "
Williams, who plays Ebony Scrooge, a demanding, wicked diva in this modern-day remake of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, has lost much of her baby fat already through rigorous exercise. She's also applying some of her makeover magic to Fox. "[Rick] is so young and fabulous, he doesn't have to do anything. But he's worried about whether his hair sticks up when he is playing basketball because I made him grow it out. With any kind of hair issue, I've got to help him out."
- Contributors:
- Ericka Souter.
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!
