"Ten comics living in a house together," muses one of them, Minnesota-based Dave Mordal. "It's just going to be a matter of time before either everybody gets used to it or somebody snaps and kills somebody." NBC is clearly banking on the latter. In the June 24 episode of this nine-week talent contest (in which the winner will get an NBC talent contract), there is no love lost between Sean Kent, a cocky, Stetson-wearing stand-up from Austin, and Rich Vos, an in-your-face comedy club veteran from New Jersey. In fact, Vos tells Kent, "I dislike you immensely." So, it seems, does everyone else in the house, an L.A. mansion. By episode's end, the Texan is voted out by a studio audience after he loses a monologue duel to the wry, laid-back Mordal. Too bad there isn't more onstage action, which is when these folks are at their funniest. Instead, we get to see them being insecure, neurotic and nasty in a format that freely borrows from Big Brother (cameras capture every put-down) and Survivor (the housemates form sneaky alliances). Out of this dark crucible America's brightest new comic is supposed to emerge? I'm not hopeful.
BOTTOM LINE: A walk on the sour side of stand-up
PBS (check local listings)
Critic's Choice
Hitchcock fans will discern echoes of Strangers on a Train in this droll Mystery! adaptation of a 1989 novel by British author Peter Lovesey (who cowrote the script). But here it's two old friends, not strangers, who get enmeshed in a plot to kill each other's mate. When vixenish Antonia Ashton (Helen McCrory) encounters mousy Rose Bell (Fay Ripley) on a London sidewalk in 1946, they learn they're both trapped in unhappy marriages—Antonia to a wealthy and insufferably dull business tycoon, Rose to a cheating, penny-pinching cretin who abuses her verbally and physically. Feigning concern for Rose's plight, Antonia convinces the battered wife she'd be much better off as a widow—then makes her one by cold-bloodedly engineering a fatal "accident" for Rose's husband. But then Antonia, anxious to move to America with her younger lover, a studly physics professor, wants a certain favor in return. Will Rose come through—or will she wilt?
Though the twisty black comedy veers occasionally into mordant farce (the kind in which a corpse is dragged up a flight of stairs in one scene, only to be hauled back down a couple of scenes later), it's redeemed by the lead performances. Ripley sublimely conveys Rose's repressed pleasure upon hearing of her louse of a spouse's demise, and McCrory has a smashing good time as scheming Antonia. At one point, seeking out her boyfriend at his health club, she brazenly strides through a locker room full of naked men. It's hard to hate a villainess as cheeky as that.
BOTTOM LINE: A howdunit to die for
Animal Planet (Tues., July 8, 15 and 22, 9 p.m. ET)
Watching a haggard band of baboon-like primates called babookaris being pursued by a flock of 7-ft.-tall wingless avians called carakillers, I had to remind myself that this chase scene was taking place 5 million years in the future, and that babookaris and carakillers are merely make-believe, the speculative doodlings of evolutionary biologists. But so convincing is the computer animation that brings these and other posthistoric creatures to life that this imaginative nature series plays eerily like the real thing. The carakillers (think Big Bird gone berserk) turn up in the July 8 episode. The following week's show leaps ahead 95 million years, when massive, 240,000-lb. toratons, resembling tortoises on steroids, roam the swamps of what used to be India. In the July 22 finale, set 200 million years hence, the animators go on a DNA bender, creating shape-shifting slime monsters, giant snails that hop about like kangaroos and flying fish called (what else?) flish. Bottom Line: Intensely Vivid Future
Terry Kelleher is on vacation.
Sunday, July 6 THE DEAD ZONE USA (10 p.m. ET) Psychic Johnny Smith (Anthony Michael Hall) runs into stormy weather.
Monday, July 7 FOR LOVE OR MONEY NBC (9 p.m. ET) Date Rob Campos or take home a million bucks? His pick decides in the two-hour finale.
Tuesday, July 8 AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL UPN (8 p.m. ET) Clips from past shows precede the runway queen's coronation.
Wednesday, July 9 CUPID CBS (10 p.m. ET) Viewers play matchmaker in this dating show produced by American Idol's Simon Cowell.
Thursday, July 10 DALE EARNHARDT TRIBUTE CONCERT FOX (8 p.m. ET) Sheryl Crow and Alabama honor the late NASCAR great.
Friday, July 11 20/20 ABC (10 p.m. ET) Barbara Walters chats up Angelina Jolie.
Saturday, July 12 THE INCREDIBLE MRS. RITCHIE SHOWTIME (7 p.m. ET) Widow Gena Rowlands helps a troubled teen in this first-run film.
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!
