It’s Time For Another ‘Kojak’ On The Telly

Danny Aiello, last seen on the small screen as a Mafia kingpin in the CBS miniseries “The Last Don,” is switching sides of the law for his new weekly series “Dellaventura.”

The show, in which Aiello plays a former cop turned private investigator, is already drawing comparisons to the ‘70s series “Kojak.”

“If ‘Dellaventura’ could be half as good as ‘Kojak,’ I could do what I dream about for this show: make it so good my friends would want to appear on it,” Aiello - whose friends include Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Chris Walken - tells Entertainment Weekly.

When it debuts Sept. 23, it will be up against today’s premier police drama, “NYPD Blue.” Says executive producer Richard DiLello: “Danny has no interest in doing semi-nude love scenes, and his show is more black-and-white, less gray, than ‘NYPD.”’

Loose talk

Gayle King, on why her new talk show is in a different time slot than pal Oprah Winfrey’s: “I didn’t want that best-friend-competing-against-best-friend thing. Plus, I don’t want to get my butt kicked.”

Happy Firth-day to you, happy Firth-day to you …

Colin Firth turns 37 today.

Guess you could say he’s as tough as nails

Stacy Keach, meanwhile, is busy bringing hard-nosed private eye Mike Hammer back to television life for a new syndicated series, “Mike Hammer: Private Eye.” Says Keach, who played the gumshoe on TV in the ‘80s: “He smokes. He takes the law into his own hands. He’s a vigilante. He’s a male chauvinist. He’s very outspoken in terms of his intolerance for injustice … three-strikes-and-you’re-out is two strikes too many for Mike Hammer.”

Sounds to us like he just needs to chill out

Rapper-turned-actor Ice-T stars as an ex-con gone straight who helps the FBI nab criminals in a new fall series for NBC, titled “Players.” Just one problem, he tells Entertainment Weekly: “They’ve got to let me get near a girl. I’ve been doing this stuff for years, and I cannot get within arm’s reach of a girl in any script. What’s up with that?”

And she should stop being so self-unconscious

Sarah Michelle Gellar, who has landed movie roles in “Scream 2” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” has a personal plot twist in mind for her “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” television series. “Right now, I just want a vacation,” Gellar says. “So it’s Buffy in a coma.”

In other words, he’s the marrying kind of kind

Johnny Galecki, who played good-guy David on “Roseanne,” has been trying to change his image in films like “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” But it isn’t easy, he admits in Movieline magazine: “A friend told me his sister and his assistant agreed if they could choose only one actor to sleep with, it would be Robert Downey Jr. If there was only one they could date, it would be Johnny Depp. And if there was only one they could marry, it would be David from ‘Roseanne.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino