Moonlighting is one of the few bright spots on ABC's horizon these days. The show's doing just fine, thank you, coming in better than halfway up the ratings—and rising. But Moonlighting deserves better than just fine; it deserves Top 10. In case you haven't watched yet, Moonlighting is a series about a couple of detectives. "Ho hum," you say. "Old stuff. Shrug." Wrong. Moonlighting is the sexiest, sassiest, snappiest show on TV. Like the vaunted Miami Vice, this series has crisp direction and hit music. But it has laughs too. It has some of the best writing around. And it has Cybill Shepherd. Sigh. She's not usually my type. Too beautiful, you know. But in Moonlighting, Cybill becomes approach-ably wonderful, downright darling, the (gorgeous) girl next door. She's a gem of romantic comedy. Her slick and sly co-star, Bruce Willis, sometimes comes off as the worst sexist this side of a Dean Martin video, but Cybill knows just how to handle such men—and that's the fun of watching them together. They crackle. They snap. They pop. So on Tuesdays at 9 p.m., watch them. Moonlighting is hereby upgraded to: A+
BROTHERS
Showtime (Wed., Oct. 23, 8 p.m. ET) Next month NBC will show a movie about AIDS. Next year Showtime will air As Is, the Broadway play about the epidemic. But this episode of Brothers is, it appears, TV's first attempt to dramatize the frightening subject. It may be odd that such a milestone comes in a sitcom, even if that sitcom is about a gay man and his family. But this show is a fine one nonetheless, telling about a football giant, played by James Avery, who gets the disease and goes to see his friends before he dies. What could easily have been exploitive is instead informative, gripping and well-done.
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