Exit Smutcoms, Enter Sweetcoms

By RICHARD CORLISS

TV's new children: sugar or sass and nothing very nice

Twice upon a time there were terrific child actors: Margaret O'Brien in '40s movies and Billy Gray on '50s TV. O'Brien's sad-eyed face, a Keane portrait with angst, told moviegoers that even if Phyllis Thaxter were your mother or Judy Garland your big sister, childhood could be an unending melotrauma of nightmares and broken ideals. Gray was the winsome lad, then the sturdy teen-ager of Father Knows Best; he navigated adolescence like a middle-class Huck Finn. O'Brien and Gray were natural, winning, resourceful actors who took both their craft and their function as role models seriously. Their like has not been seen since--and, sibling, do we need them now!

The hollow triumph of right-wing moralists over timid network moguls has been to replace women in tight sweaters with aren't-they-adorable children. There goes the smutcom; here comes the sweetcom. Few tears will be shed over the demise of the jiggle-and-snigger shows. But even at their worst they suggested nothing more pernicious than that men do make passes at girls in Jordaches. The two forms of sweetcoms, the noble and the naughty, are deadlier. They announce that children are either sugar or sass--dewy-souled twerps or stunted comedians--and that they must set the tone for domestic life. Hence, parents must go with the flow: act as dispensers of homilies or as stoic butts for the resident insult comic.

The American family has weathered the Bunkers and the Louds. It has endured the departures of sweet Kristy McNichol and, after this season, Little House's Melissa Gilbert, and kept another charmer, Marilyn Jones of ABC'S upcoming series King's Crossing, on hold. Can it survive the child as cult object? Now that President Reagan is calling for a return to traditional values, television families should discipline their own children. A few home remedies:

Designer Hair Shirts. Every week on Little House on the Prairie (NBC, Mondays at 8 p.m. E.S.T.) something new visits the Ingalls home: plague, disease, blindness and enough orphans to stock every Annie road company. For eight years the three Ingalls children have proved that with the right kind of adversity and a father like Michael Landon, you can go in there a youngster and come out a star.

Bed Without Supper. Not everything can be blamed on Gary Coleman. The sassy black kid--the slick-speaking bro who scores points off the ofay--goes back to the Good Times of the mid-'70s. But it was Coleman, on Dijfrent Strokes (NBC, Thursdays at 9 p.m.), who parlayed his cheekiness into stardom. And now a horde of white child actors have co-opted the game. It must be stopped.

Supper Without Bed. Producer-Writer Michael Landon has proved himself a man with a mission. In Little House, a TV movie and now Father Murphy (NBC, Tuesdays at 8 p.m.), he has persistently dramatized one theme: children's fear of bedwetting. Father Murphy, which disposed of this problem in the first episode, provides a home for the frontier orphans who could not fit into Little House but are nonetheless aggressively wonderful.

Two Weeks at Don Rickles' Summer Camp. In Gimme a Break (NBC, Thursdays at 9:30 p.m.), Lara Jill Miller, 14, proclaims, to laughter and applause from the studio audience: "I hate dresses. They show off your boobs." Lara, a midget Sophie Tucker in corduroys, seems destined to head her own Vegas lounge act. So surrender: send her to Rickles' camp and leave her there.

A Semester at Dotheboys Hall.

Wackford Squeers, the scurvy headmaster from Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, has trouble with enrollment--his students keep starving on him. He could use Clark Brandon, who plays high school apprentice to Barnard Hughes' Mr. Merlin (CBS, Wednesdays at 8 p.m.). Brandon is a comely lad--in the androgynous, Los Angelized tradition of former teen throbs like David Cassidy--but his character lacks character. Squeers' spartan regimen and unspared rod could provide it.

Better Lines. Love, Sidney (NBC, Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m.) is, by default, sweetcom's class act. Tony Randall, the John Gielgud of series TV, has brought his deft good humor to the role of a cranky bachelor of no particular sexual persuasion. Swoosie Kurtz, as Sidney's live-in friend, combines the charm of Sally Field with the comic timing of Soupy Sales--and somehow looks like both. Together they demonstrate that even treacle pudding can pack some savor. Only Kaleena Kiff, 7, is a problem. She is not unbearable; she is not a toy saint; she is just not there. Perhaps it is unfair to ask a child to carry the weight of a sitcom--unless he weighs 200 Ibs., like the newborn creature played by Jonathan Winters on Mork and Mindy (ABC, Thursdays at 8 p.m.).

Or perhaps sterner measures are demanded. Try this, America: every child should be sent to bed without watching TV--or appearing on it. --By Richard Corliss

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