USA (Sun.-Mon., April 18-19, 8 p.m. ET)
As Spartacus, the Roman gladiator who led a slave uprising in 73 B.C., Goran Visnjic brings the soothing, heavy-lidded, bedside manner of Dr. Luka Kovac, his ER character, to the role. He's intense, quiet, thoughtful, well-intentioned. But would you follow this guy into battle? His Spartacus is a reluctant, indecisive leader. Donald Trump would make mincemeat of him in the boardroom. Kirk Douglas, who starred as Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick's 1960 epic, could be hammy, but he oozed charisma from every well-oiled pore. You can feel his pride in the movie's most stirring scene, when his defeated troops, seeking to conceal their leader's identity, rise one by one and declare, "I am Spartacus." That scene, curiously, is one of the few not recycled by this plodding four-hour miniseries based, like the movie, on Howard Fast's 1951 novel. The elements are all there: Spartacus's transformation from feisty gold-mine slave into the A-Rod of gladiators, his touchingly chaste first night with Varinia, the slave woman who would become his wife (vacuously portrayed by Sweet Home Alabama's Rhona Mitra), and the shocking self-sacrifice of a glad-school rival (NYPD Blues' Henry Simmons) that ignites the bloody rebellion. But the way these scenes and others play out evokes the thumping, budget-conscious banality of Xena: Warrior Princess.
The battles are particularly underwhelming. You rarely get a sense of the guerrilla ingenuity that enabled Spartacus's vastly outnumbered army to defeat superior Roman legions. The only touch of credibility is provided by two British actors (cast, of course, as Roman senators—one of Hollywood's most venerable clichés). The late Sir Alan Bates, in his last screen role, imbues Agrippa, a rotund, canny elder statesman, with acerbic dignity, while Angus MacFadyen (Braveheart) makes Spartacus's archenemy Crassus a villain so beguilingly—and enjoyably—evil that he deserves his own miniseries. I, Crassus? I'd watch.
DRAMA
NBC (Mondays, 10 p.m. ET)
The second season of this series set at Rocco's 22nd Street, a trendy Manhattan eatery, quickly shapes up as a grudge match between charismatic if petulant young chef Rocco DiSpirito and his long-simmering business partner Jeffrey Chodorow. Having seen the restaurant eat up $600,000 since it opened last June, Chodorow sends in an A-Team of corporate underlings to oversee changes from the kitchen to the bar. "He's a big bully," gripes Rocco, who, in protest, sulks Achilles-like in his office—that is, when he's not off autographing his new cookbook or posing for snapshots with patrons. Complains Chodorow: "All he does is schmooze." So the stage is set for a deliciously nasty showdown. Where will it all end? Probably in court next season. In February, after filming ended, Chodorow filed suit against DiSpirito for alleged mismanagement; on April 5 Rocco countersued for $6 million, claiming he has been locked out of the restaurant. So this show may just be the first course.
REALITY
The Last Witness
PBS (Sun., April 18 and 25, 9 p.m. ET)
She's 54, a single, driven. sleep-deprived career woman, and her bosses on London's Metropolitan Police force want her to retire after 30 years on the job. But Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison (smartly played by Helen Mirren) refuses to go quietly—or at all. Instead, she big-foots a younger male subordinate by taking over the homicide of a Bosnian woman whose tortured body was dumped at a London construction site. As usual, nothing goes well for Tennison. The twisty case, which involves a Serbian war criminal, is impeded by higher-ups and sabotaged by someone in Tennison's own ranks. Meanwhile, her rekindled romance with a journalist (Liam Cunningham) helping her track the killer appears tenuous at best. The pleasure comes from watching Mirren run the emotional gamut from self-pity to steely resolve to aching empathy for the victims of the genocide that Tennison uncovers.
MYSTERY
A & E (Mon., April 19, 9 p.m. ET)
I never got into Six Feet Under, HBO's series about a fictional family of undertakers. But I could get hooked on this mordantly amusing half-hour series about a real-life funeral-home clan in San Diego. Shonna Smith, the neurotically perfectionist head mortician of Poway Bernardo Mortuary, dotes on her two sisters, assistant funeral director Melissa Wissmiller and office manager Emily Vigney, but she can be tough on their father, hearse driver Chuck Wissmiller (the nephew of late Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller). "Dad, I don't want the casket to flip!" Shonna shouts as they race to get a loved one to a funeral on time. Some of their tensions have nothing to do with work. Ex-boxer Chuck, who, as a colleague notes, "has an extremely short fuse," snaps at Emily for tweaking him. Still, the job comes first. "She's a viewable, but she's a mess," says an apprentice embalmer about one disfigured traffic-accident victim. We are allowed a few discreet peeks as Shonna works her cosmetic magic. The staff's deadpan humor--call it esprit de corpse--and earthy pragmatism help defuse the stress of their grim profession. As Chuck observes: "Life is what it is, you know? Any time you're above ground, you're ahead of the game."
REALITY
VH1 Divas (VH1, April 18, 9 p.m. ET)
Talk about girl power: Cyndi Lauper, Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Jessica Simpson and Deborah Harry perform in the seventh annual charity concert, live from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Whoopi (NBC, April 20, 8p.m. ET)
Think the presidential race is getting nasty? In the season finale, Mavis (Whoopi Goldberg) fights back after her brother Courtney gets dissed by his opponent in New York's state assembly race. Seems she once had a fling with the guy.
CMT 2004 Flame Worthy Video Music Awards (CMT, April 21, 8 p.m. ET)
Y'all sit back and enjoy Sheryl Crow, Toby Keith, Shania Twain and others in this awards show voted on by country fans.
That '70s Show (FOX, April 21, 8 p.m. ET)
Look, it's Brooke! Ms. Shields is back as Jackie's hot mama, Pamela, who gets some unwelcome exposure in this episode.
Jill Hennessy During a six-month hiatus from Crossing Jordan last fall, Jill Hennessy swapped body bags for baby bottles when she and her husband, actor Paolo Mastropietro, welcomed their first son, Marco, 7 months. Now she's back for her third season as fearless Boston medical examiner Jordan Cavanaugh.
ON HER NEW ROLE AS MOM I'm relishing it and trying to find some time to sleep. Boy, sometimes you really appreciate a good shower. You think, "Wouldn't it be great if I could have time to eat right now?" I'm so lucky because my husband loves taking care of the baby. He does everything except breastfeed, and if he could do that, he would.
ON GOING BACK TO WORK God bless the producers here because they've allowed me to bring Marco onset. So I do some scenes, I nurse him, play with him a bit. When you shoot an intense scene where you're autopsying a body, it's great to be able to run back and look at his cute face.
ON WHAT'S MISSING IN HER LIFE Movies. I tried to see Lost in Translation with Marco, but he woke up and I had to leave the theater. It's tough, but hey, he's going to grow up soon, so I better appreciate it now.
- Contributors:
- Mike Lipton,
- Brenda Rodriguez.
