Would It Fool the Family Cat?

By Richard Zoglin

It was a disappointing fall for the Big Three networks, but they learned some valuable lessons. For example: while most viewers like cop shows and enjoy a good song, they definitely have no patience for singing cops. Also: even well-done family sitcoms, like NBC's Parenthood, are apt to get lost in the current oversupply of cute TV clans. And pouring big money into shows to compete with CBS's Sunday-night powerhouse 60 Minutes is a fruitless exercise. NBC, at least, seems to have learned that lesson: in February it will introduce Sunday Best, a shamelessly cost-efficient variety show that will feature highlights from the previous week's NBC shows.

But the nice thing about network programming is that you never stop learning. This month brings the first big wave of midseason replacement shows, and a whole new series of lessons can be gleaned from the January crop:

The cold war is over; spies should go home. Dylan Del'Amico, the protagonist of ABC's new series Under Cover, seemed to have grasped this when he left his field assignment for a CIA-type intelligence agency (known here as The Company) and moved to a desk job in Washington. But those overseas assignments just keep on coming -- both for Dylan and for his wife, another ex-agent having a hard time retiring. First, Dylan must thwart a former KGB chief who is plotting to assassinate a popular Soviet reformer. Then, in a hot-off-the- presses story line, he and his colleagues race to stop a renegade Iraqi colonel from launching a biological weapon against Israel. There are folks back at the agency to contend with as well: a new generation of computer jocks who disdain the old-timers, and a slimy acting director who longs for a new Stalin in the Soviet Union to "give us our enemy back."

Well, it might at least give us our spy entertainments back. Under Cover, the latest effort from China Beach creators William Broyles Jr. and John Sacret Young, updates the cold-war thriller by turning it into a sort of globe-trotting thirtysomething. When these sensitive agents aren't having moralistic arguments over who should or shouldn't be sent on a dangerous assignment, they are worrying about who's minding the kids. Anthony Denison (Crime Story) and Linda Purl are agreeable enough as the spy couple, but the romance founders on dialogue like "You know, I didn't realize you were a blonde until two weeks into our first mission together." Their new mission will be a tough one.

Big stars cannot redeem bad sitcoms. This season has already brought us Burt Reynolds sleepwalking through the overrated CBS comedy Evening Shade. Now Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal have set back their careers about 10 years (three for her; seven for him) by fronting another grueling CBS entry, Good Sports. Fawcett plays Gayle Roberts, a veteran anchor for an all-sports network run by a Ted Turner-like mogul. O'Neal is "Downtown" Bobby Tannen, an ex-football star fallen on hard times, who is brought in to be her on-air partner. Their bickering, Moonlighting-style relationship is signaled none too subtly in the opening cast credits: "Farrah Fawcett vs. Ryan O'Neal."

TV shows set in TV newsrooms represent a low ebb of creative imagination, but Good Sports may set a record for ineptitude. Creator Alan Zweibel (It's Garry Shandling's Show) flicks in a few satirical jabs at TV, but mostly he seems tuned to another channel. The characters are so woozily out of focus that after two episodes one still can't tell whether Bobby is supposed to be simply naive or mentally retarded. Or why Gayle, the TV pro, keeps having spats with him in front of a nationwide audience. Or why, when he rents an apartment directly opposite hers, she doesn't at least draw the shades. Or why . . . awww, never mind.

Vampires, for all the mayhem they cause, are pretty boring people. It probably sounded like a good idea on paper: Dark Shadows, a daytime hit on ABC in the late 1960s, resurrects itself as an NBC prime-time series. Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire) plays Barnabas Collins, the mysterious "cousin from England" who shows up at the Collinwood estate and sets about relieving various relatives and townspeople of their red cells. Producer/director Dan Curtis (who did the original show) has given the series a dark, somber look and a high-toned cast that includes Jean Simmons as the Collins family matriarch.

But the new Dark Shadows is drained of blood well before Barnabas bares his fangs. The pace is funereal; the plot twists, pure gothic boiler plate. There's the fresh-faced governess who arrives at the mansion to tutor an eerily disturbed child; the slow-witted groundskeeper who is enslaved by the vampire (paging Dwight Frye); the 200-year-old paintings that -- gasp! -- bear a striking resemblance to present-day folk; the baffled reaction of doctors and police to mysterious deaths in the town ("Looks like some kind of wild animal tried to tear her throat out"). Cross has a suave-but-menacing manner ) so transparent that it wouldn't fool the family cat, and his tortured pleas for sympathy are unconvincing. "I cannot help myself!" he cries at one point. Excuses, excuses.