Youth and Sociology

As has become its custom, ABC-TV has looked over its current line-up of shows and tossed out nine of them. Victims of the tune-out are Land of the Giants, It Takes a Thief, The Engelbert Humperdinck Show, Pat Paulsen's Half a Comedy Hour, Paris 7000, The Flying Nun, Here Come the Brides, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters Hour. On all the networks, the thing for next year is Youth and Sociology. But if you're No. 3, apparently, you really try harder.

Of ABC-TV's new shows, four are youth-oriented. The Young Rebels, a one-hour drama set in Revolutionary Pennsylvania, focuses on three young members of a Yankee guerrilla band. The Young Lawyers deals with law students and a legal-aid society. In Dial Hot Line. Psychiatrist Vince Edwards (Dr. Ben Casey) runs a telephone service set up by a metropolitan hospital to deal with troubled teens who have no one else to talk to. The Partridge Family is a situation-comedy series dealing with a rock group headed by the mother of the family (shades of The Cowsills).

Black Barefoot. For the more mature, there's the Danny Thomas Show, featuring the star as a grandfather. Two new series are based on plays written by Neil Simon. One of them, The Odd Couple, stars Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. The other, Barefoot in the Park, makes a switch from white to black, with a cast headed by Scoey Mitchlll and Nipsey Russell. Based on Simon's cozy white-middle-class comedy about a square Manhattan lawyer, his silly wife and their nutty neighbor, this black version is certainly an intriguing--if arbitrary--departure from the original version. Whether or not it portends a network trend remains to be seen (My Three Sons moves from Southern California to Harlem? Green Acres in the ghetto?).

For viewers desiring drama, the network has dreamed up The Immortal, all about a guy whose blood type makes him immune to disease--as well as aging --and hence is on the run from all those other guys who want his secret; Zig Zag, featuring a trio of master criminologists consisting of Ralph Bellamy, George Maharis and Inger Stevens; and The Silent Force, concerning the fight against organized crime. If that is not enough high drama, every Monday night you can watch N.F.L. Football, which does not really need any explanation.

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