B+
By the early 1960s, Cold War tension was getting everyone bummed. The nation had already been dragged through a decade of spy hysteria: the McCarthy hearings, the Rosenbergs, the U-2 incident. Then, in October 1962, came the Cuban missile crisis. Apocalypse seemed to stride right to our front door and lift its fist to knock. The following spring, the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, was released in America. The public, sick of worrying, took to the notion of espionage as glamorous fun, naughtily enjoyable as foreplay. TV was soon filled with shows about agents, all beautifully mod and sleek: The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, Mission: Impossible, even Get Smart.
Spy Game, a new hour-long ABC series, is a happy rehash of any or all of those. Linden Ashby and Allison Smith play employees of a secret government outfit, E.C.H.O. (Emergency Counter Hostilities Organization). Headquarters are concealed behind a brick wall that opens only if you race your sports car toward it at 100 mph. In the premiere, they fight Ashby's old mentor, who became a terrorist after being fired during budget cutbacks in the '80s. The violence—and it's considerable—is of the chop-socko martial-arts kind. Sam Raimi, who had a hand in the knowingly dumb-funny Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its spinoff Xena: Warrior Princess, is an executive producer here. Spy Game is dumb-funnier still.
MTV'(Mondays. 10:30 p.m. ET)
B
Spun off from a character on Beavis and Butt-head, this animated half-hour series follows the adventures—actually, nonadventures—of a poisonously sarcastic teenage girl. Too smart to be engaged by her high school classes, too plain to be taken seriously by boys, too hip to like her parents, Daria navigates her suburban world with incredulous detachment, as if she were sleepwalking through an inane dream. She does not have enough energy even to laugh at her own snide remarks. Tracy Grandstaff, Daria's voice, sounds like Janeane Garofalo. Just the right tone. Visually, though, Daria is misconceived. With her helmet of hair and pursed mouth, she looks like Elaine May.
CBS (Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m. ET)
C
Does the world need a second Fran Drescher? It might be good to have a spare on hand in case the original decides she wants to go to finishing school. But otherwise I see no use for two, and certainly not on the same network. In this new sitcom making its premiere on March 5, Debi Mazar plays a Brooklyn-raised working girl, savvy but unsophisticated. She tawks the tawk, she wawks the wawk. After losing her job at a cosmetics counter (Drescher's Nanny sold makeup too), she is hired by a Manhattan temp agency, run by brittle, no-nonsense Joanna Gleason. Mazar is probably best known to audiences as Denise Ianello on L.A. Law and for her tiny role as Two-Face's girlfriend Spice in Batman Forever. She has undeniable presence. She gives off the crude, bold sparkle of costume jewelry. But Fran Drescher still does a better Fran Drescher. Mazar is wasting her time.
PBS (Fri, March 14, 9 p.m. ET)
B-
Unlike Spy Game, which is an exercise in retro chic, this pledge-month special is unvarnished nostalgia for anyone who watched the orchestra leader in the course of his long run on TV. The Lawrence Welk Show premiered on ABC in 1955 and remained in production until 1982. Welk died in 1992, but his orchestra still exists, conducted for occasional TV specials by accordionist Myron Floren. This recently taped 80-minute concert features a big-band medley, hymns, patriotic anthems and the theme from Exodus. Many of the old regulars are here: Irish tenor Joe Feeney, pianist Jo Ann Castle and the Lennon Sisters. Older now, most of them are not terribly energetic performers. But, then, Welk's show was always the mildest of diversions. He called his music "champagne." In truth it was milk.
>Arsenio Hall
BACK IN BUSINESS
FOR A GUY WHOSE CATCHPHRASE USED to be "Let's get busy," Arsenio Hall has been keeping a low profile since he retired his syndicated talk show in 1994. Turns out he was just waiting for the right moment for a comeback. "I went to lay around in Acapulco," Hall says. "Two weeks into it, I knew in my heart I wasn't gone from the business for good." Now his hiatus is officially ending. On Wed., March 5, the sitcom Arsenio premieres at 9:30 p.m. ET on ABC. "I've jokingly referred to it as Black About You," says Hall, 41, who plays a TV sportscaster married to Independence Day's Vivica A. Fox, "but it's more like, an integrated Friends."
Hall's return hasn't been snag-free. In January, Arsenio executive producer David Rosenthal quit after a reported war of words with the star. "Adjustments have been necessary," concedes former ABC Entertainment chairman Ted Harbert, who took Rosenthal's place, "but we think we now have a smart, sophisticated show."
For his part, Hall says he prefers the sitcom format. "Talk shows vs. sitcoms is like tennis vs. basketball," he says. "In basketball the guys have friends, a team. On my talk show I felt I didn't have anybody to pat on the butt or give a high five to. Having a talk show was one of my dreams," he adds. "But I didn't get into show business to do just One thing."
- 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!
