Who’s On For Fall? Lineup Of New Shows For Prime Time Has Some Don’t-Miss Hits, Some Don’t-Bother Misses
Here’s a look at the new prime-time television series:
Sunday
“The Wonderful World of Disney” (ABC, premieres Sept. 28):
It all started on ABC back in 1954. A total of 34 seasons and three different networks later, “Disney” is back.
This time, “Wonderful World” is a two-hour block featuring Disney-produced or -endorsed films.
And what blockbusters, launching with the smash feature “Toy Story,” and including the big-budget TV film “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella.”
“Jenny” (NBC, premieres Sept. 28):
The outrageous young comedienne with the big - er, mouth bounces from MTV to the big time in her new eponymous sitcom.
Jenny McCarthy plays Jenny McMillan, a zany young lovely who flees Utica, N.Y., when she inherits a Hollywood Hills bachelor pad left to her by the father she never met, B-movie star Guy Hathaway (played by George Hamilton in beyond-the-grave videos and films shot before Guy’s demise).
Joining Jenny in California is her childhood friend Maggie (Heather Paige Kent).
There’s plenty to like about Jenny McCarthy, unless you happen not to. As for her sitcom? No episode was available for review.
Monday
“Timecop” (ABC, premieres Sept. 22):
No, this isn’t about the supervisor who docks you for being late to the office. It’s a futuristic adventure from the same producers who created the 1994 film, and tells of the TEC (Time Enforcement Commission), which polices the time continuum against criminals seeking to change the course of history.
The year is 2007, and Jack Logan (T.W. King) is our hero Timecop. If he doesn’t keep the bad guys from messing up the past, well, none of us may have a future. But even time-travel technology is insufficient to gauge this show’s future, and no episode was available for review.
“George & Leo” (CBS, premieres Monday):
This is by-the-book Newhart, and reads like a sure thing. Bob (er, George) owns a bookstore on Martha’s Vineyard, where his son and future daughter-in-law run a restaurant. But tranquility is threatened with his son’s engagement, when the bride’s reprobate father shows up.
That would be Leo (played by “Taxi’s” Judd Hirsch), a small-time hood and part-time magician. His daughter hasn’t seen him in years - and prefers it that way.
Of course, Leo will stay on. Of course, he will glom onto the quiet, fidgety George, as well as on the newlyweds (played by Jason Bateman and Bess Meyer).
On this sure-to-be tight little island, Hirsch is spot-on as the oily, rascally Leo - a marked departure from his usual role as moral center. And in his fourth sitcom, Newhart sparkles just being the perpetually off-center Newhart.
“Brooklyn South” (CBS, premieres Sept. 22):
The “uniforms” walk a tough beat in this new ensemble drama from Steven Bochco. For one thing, a posse of thought police is after them.
Just as when Bochco’s most recent cop show, “NYPD Blue,” premiered four seasons ago, a largely ill-informed and self-serving campaign has flared up with the aim of burning “Brooklyn South” at the stake.
The obvious response for any thinking viewer: Watch the show and then decide. Based on the pilot (which most of its lynch mob still hasn’t seen), the show is tough, compelling and fully acceptable as adult drama.
The visual style is completely different from the cramped, jerky feeling of the Manhattan-set “NYPD Blue.” Both outside and in, “South” is sleek, ominous and even eerily spacious.
Truly an ensemble drama, the cast includes soon-to-be-not-unknowns like Jon Tenney, Patrick McGaw and Yancy Butler, as well as Bochco veteran James B. Sikking.
The one nagging question: Will viewers want to watch a show whose characters all dress the same?
“Ally McBeal” (FOX, premiered Sept. 8):
The title character (played by “Birdcage’s” Calista Flockhart) is a lawyer. Single. Pretty. Bright. Ambitious.
She joins a small Boston law firm. But who should be a colleague but her former long-time love Billy (Gil Bellows), now married.
Clearly, they are going to get in each other’s way - and be subject to that same old emotional tug.
Meanwhile, the romantic drama is blended with comedic moments befitting Kelley’s sly sense of humor. Ally’s private thoughts and emotions are played out in quick-cut fantasies to which only we are privy. For instance, when Ally learns that Billy is taken, we see arrows pierce her chest.
Smart and sexy, “Ally” tallies the thrills and woes of twentysomething love and work. Looks like it could work.
“Good News” (UPN, premiered Aug. 25):
Pastor David Randolph is young, attractive, dedicated - yet not entirely acceptable to the Church of Life he has been named to lead. In fact, when he arrives, the church staff leaves.
But Pastor Randolph is determined to win back the protesting staff and win over the congregation, a volatile and judgmental flock.
The result is a largely formula sitcom with a calm central character (the pastor) holding firm against a group of zanies.
The good news in “Good News,” however, is the pastor’s blend of callowness and dignity (as played by David P. Ramsey), as well as the gospel music and rousing good spirits whenever church commences with a service.
So if “Good News” isn’t the funniest sitcom around, it can claim two other qualities even rarer in that genre: a touch of realism and of soul.
Tuesday
“Over The Top” (ABC, premieres Sept. 23):
He’s an actor who was once in demand but, by now, the flamboyant and temperamental Simon Ferguson has alienated everyone in show business.
Broke and out of work, he has only one recourse: to seek refuge with his favorite ex-wife, Kate, who happens to manage a Manhattan hotel.
Of course, Ferguson’s style hasn’t mellowed one iota, which makes him an object of fascination among the hotel’s guests, not to mention Kate’s two kids.
And what’s Kate’s reaction to this thespian whirlwind re-entering her life? We’ll have to wait and see, since no preview tape was available.
The sitcom stars Annie Potts (“Designing Women”) and Tim Curry (“Rocky Horror Picture Show”).
“Hiller & Diller” (ABC, premieres Sept. 23):
One of Hiller’s kids wisecracks that Diller’s kids seem like something out of “The Addams Family.” And she’s right.
The relatively normal personality and tender family life of Ted Hiller (“Saturday Night Live’s” Kevin Nealon) belongs on a completely different show from his best friend, the pathetically inept single father Neil Diller (Richard Lewis) and his hooligan spawn.
Adding to “H&D’s” problems is the nature of the Hiller-Diller partnership: They are TV writers, a device that hasn’t clicked for a TV sitcom since “The Dick Van Dyke Show” more than 30 years ago.
“Michael Hayes” (CBS, premieres Sept. 23):
Welcome back to TV, David Caruso! All is forgiven. Almost.
Anyway, “NYPD Blue’s” prodigal hero returns to TV crime-fighting as an ex-cop turned federal prosecutor, working not so many blocks from the Lower East Side station house Detective John Kelly stormed out of at the end of the 1993-94 season.
A preview episode suggests that, with Caruso at the helm, “Michael Hayes” will be pretty much what you’d expect: gritty, somber and not afraid to liven things up with a suicide by a cop gone wrong or a car bomb or some other pyrotechnics staged at judicious intervals.
“Dellaventura” (CBS, premieres Sept. 23):
Danny Aiello plays a former NYPD detective who was too tough, too downright dangerous to be an NYPD detective. So what else could Dellaventura do? He became a private detective, of course - then got a TV show.
In the take-no-prisoners hard sell of the CBS press department, Dellaventura has “built his business helping people who have nowhere else to go, stacking the deck for the underdog.”
A preview episode wasn’t available.
“Hitz” (UPN, premiered Aug. 26):
This sitcom airing back-to-back with “Head Over Heels” adds up to the most obnoxious new hour of the season.
The “Hitz” half, set at the headquarters of HiTower Records, centers on two artists-and-repertoire guys (Claude Brooks and Rick Gomez) who are desperate to land a hot new recording act.
But what truly distinguishes “Hitz” is its sparingly seen star, Andrew Dice Clay. Cast as HiTower’s president, he plays Andrew Dice Clay as a record company president, as he passes through at infrequent intervals to bully his employees and zing sexist comments at the women.
There’s not much left to say for “Hitz.” Send it straight away to the cutout bin.
“Head Over Heels” (UPN, premiered Aug. 26):
Right on the heels of “Hitz” is this equally moronic effort, about two brothers who run a video dating service on Miami’s South Beach “to get chicks.”
Mitchell Whitfield plays earnest Warren Baldwin, who thinks whoever he happens to be dating is “the one.”
His rakish brother Jack (Peter Dobson) prefers to strip romance from his womanizing, reminding Mitchell “there is no such thing as ‘the one.’ There’s the one-hundredth, the one-thousandth and, God willing, the one-millionth.”
The show should have plenty of appeal for adolescent boys: lots of young women in spandex and low-cut tops. Other viewers may want to break this date.
Wednesday
“Dharma & Greg” (ABC, premieres Sept. 24):
With her rabbity grin and peekaboo midriff, Jenna Elfman has a certain sexuality. She’s certainly the only thing worth remembering from the flopped “Townies” two years ago.
But even if her new sitcom launches her as a star, you might still more accurately call it “Dharma & Dregs.”
Reaching at least as far back for its inspiration as “Bridget Loves Bernie” (which launched Meredith Baxter a quarter-century ago), “D&G” is yet another romantic comedy about a mixed marriage and a culture clash.
In this case, she’s a hippie-dippie free spirit, whereas her soulmate Greg (Thomas Gibson) is a conservative assistant U.S. attorney and a wealthy blue-blood, to boot. Oh please.
The pilot wastes no time (or nuance) before establishing their chance meeting and impulse nuptials. But any whimsy collapses beneath the weight of sheer implausibility:
What, besides sheer randiness, would possess such an apparent stick-in-the-mud as Greg to fall for such an airhead as Dharma? Meanwhile, what does Dharma see in this young fuddy-duddy?
Quick, let’s have this show annulled.
“Public Eye” (CBS, premieres Oct. 1):
Will America love Bryant Gumbel just one hour a week instead of 10 … at night instead of in the morning … and on CBS instead of NBC?
Nine months almost to the day since he ended his 15-year reign as “Today Show” anchor, Gumbel returns to network TV in this prime-time magazine tailored to his skills and personality.
Unavailable for preview (for obvious reasons), “Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel” will mix traditional newsmagazine reports with live newsmaker interviews, he told reporters during the summer.
“Tony Danza” (NBC, premieres Sept. 24):
The title says it all.
Sure, there are some narrative trappings. Danza plays a New York sportswriter and a recently separated dad with two daughters - one an 11-year-old hypochondriac, the other a blossoming 16-year-old who ties her old man in knots.
Tony, of course, is a heart-of-gold lug. Now throw in Tony’s assistant, Carmen Cruz (Maria Canals), a smart and sassy computer whiz who does as much for a pair of jeans as she does for a disk drive.
It’s all pretty predictable, with just one surprise: Danza, who’s still as eager to please and as pleasing as he was his first season on “Taxi.”
He’s a delight. Too bad this show’s tired concept strands him in a solo act.
“Built To Last” (NBC, premieres Sept. 24):
It’s described as a heart-warming family comedy, so don’t say you weren’t warned.
Comedian Royale Watkins plays - you guessed it - Royale Watkins, an Ivy Leaguer whose computer career gets sidetracked when his father suffers a mild heart attack. To keep the family’s beloved construction business from going under, Royale leaves California to move home to Washington, D.C., where he takes over day-to-day management of Watkins Construction Co.
Prominent in the ensemble cast is veteran actor Paul Winfield, who plays Royale’s dad Russel.
No preview episode, however, was available.
“Working” (NBC, premieres Oct. 8):
The boyhood star of “The Wonder Years,” Fred Savage, returns to series TV in a sitcom about a young man trying to make it in corporate business without selling out.
At the Upton/Webber Co. (whose product line remains a mystery to viewers) Matt Peyser’s “wonder years” focus on wondering whether getting ahead means leaving behind his humanity.
No preview episode was available.
Thursday
“Nothing Sacred” (ABC, previewed Friday; premieres Thursday):
It’s hard to pull off a dramatic series about a religious leader. Either he comes across as a goody two-shoes or he’s deeply flawed.
Anybody knows the latter state makes for better drama. But some viewers insist that any character with a cleric’s collar be sanctified as a by-the-Good-Book role model.
Meet Father Ray, who clearly isn’t blessed with seamless piety, any more than with a winning personality. Played irascibly by Kevin Anderson, Father Ray is self-doubt personified as he fights for his downtrodden parish, wondering with every battle why he bothers.
All this is as it should be. How can that most important of human issues - the existence of something larger than yourself - be dramatized without making doubt a player?
Despite the uproar it has triggered among some Catholics, “Nothing Sacred” is a truly reverent series, as well as a compelling one. It suggests that a priest, like any human, can do good without being unvaryingly “good.”
One of the season’s best new series, it can help restore viewers’ faith in higher values. And, by the way, in television.
“Cracker” (ABC, previewed Friday; premieres Thursday):
Fretful and indignant fans of the original “Cracker” may hereby relax. Americanizing “Cracker” hasn’t meant its ruin.
As amazing as it may seem, transplanting this project from British TV to a major U.S. network not only hasn’t led to watering, and dumbing, it down but, on the contrary, has resulted in a rather faithful adaptation.
Sure, Robbie Coltrane masterfully originated the role of Gerry “Fitz” Fitzgerald, a Manchester, England, psychologist and rascal.
But Robert Pastorelli (“Murphy Brown”) is splendid as a Yankee version based in Los Angeles - and no less slovenly, sarcastic or infuriating as he applies his uncanny grasp of the human mind to help the Los Angeles Police Department catch psychos otherwise beyond their reach.
As ever, Fitz has lots of weaknesses and vices. Gambling, boozing and a bad attitude are among them.
“Union Square” (NBC, premieres Sept. 25):
Turn the Cheers bar into a diner, move it from Boston to New York’s Greenwich Village and fill it with a multi-ethnic mix of artists and bohemians. But make sure you keep it on Thursday night!
That’s the short order for this sitcom, but just how stick-to-the-ribs funny it can be is open to doubt.
The cast of characters - the macho short-order cook, the Rastafarian boss, the lawyer-turned-would-be-playwright - don’t rise above the level of stereotypes, at least in the pilot. The neurotic real estate agent (Harriet Sansom Harris) mostly conjures up thoughts of Stockard Channing in the role.
“Veronica’s Closet” (NBC, premieres Sept. 25):
You can’t argue with success. And on TV, success can’t be assured much better than sitting right after “Seinfeld” on the schedule.
On that basis, “Veronica’s Closet” is, as the buzz assures us, a success. Otherwise, it’s a tawdry disgrace.
Set in an upscale lingerie company, this shtickcom stars Kirstie Alley as the country’s magnate of romance and its authority on relationships - not to mention something of a fraud. She woefully confesses she hasn’t had sex since “Ferris Bueller” came out, and ends her supposedly perfect marriage after getting fed up with her husband’s umpteenth episode of womanizing.
“Veronica’s Closet” comes draped in the highest of expectations by oddsmakers, who think it’s about to slip into something very comfortable: hit status.
“Between Brothers” (FOX, premiered Thursday):
Two brothers. Sexy, successful. But diametric opposites. One’s no-nonsense. The other’s happy-go-lucky.
Now add two college pals. Which equals four, played by Kadeem Hardison, Dondre Whitfield, Tommy Davidson and Kelly Perrine.
They all hang out at a microbrewery. Where they pursue and obsess about women. No preview tape was available.
“413 Hope Street” (FOX, premiered Thursday):
The intentions surrounding this show are probably sterling, but good will doesn’t necessarily make for good drama. Not at this address, anyway.
Mr. Thomas (played by Richard “Shaft” Roundtree) is a wealthy businessman who saw his son get gunned down for his sneakers. In response, the grieving father caused a teen crisis center to rise at the actual location where the boy lost his life.
Even viewers who don’t find the “hope” street moniker a cloying device may conclude that what goes on inside the center is hopelessly predictable and contrived. Pat crises abound.
It’s one-stop shopping for heartrending stories and righteous displays of all kinds. In short, “Hope Street” needs a treatment program for itself: cliche detox.
Friday
“You Wish” (ABC, premieres Sept. 26):
Painfully similar to “Meego” (see below), this fanciful sitcom unleashes hyperactive John Ales as a genie sprung from a carpet he’s been trapped in for 2,000 years.
His new “master” is really a mistress, Gillian Apple (Harley Jane Kozak), who’s a single mother with a 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son.
Reluctantly at first, Gillian accepts the playful genie’s offer to come into their home and add a little magic.
A shaggy-carpet story, “You Wish” amounts to “Meego” without its star Bronson Pinchot and with less-impressive special effects.
“Teen Angel” (ABC, premieres Sept. 26):
Don’t bet on McDonald’s to sponsor this sitcom.
When his best friend Steve dares him to eat a rancid old hamburger they find underneath his bed, 15-year-old Marty does it.
The next thing he knows, Marty is in a pickle: He has died and gone to heaven, where he gets assigned to serve as Steve’s guardian angel.
Dispatched (complete with wings) back to earth, Marty is invisible to everyone but his pal and charge. Soon enough, they realize that with Marty’s new powers as an angel, they’re going to have a devil of a good time.
“Teen Angel” is bad.
“Meego” (CBS, premieres Friday):
Painfully similar to “You Wish” (see above), this fanciful sitcom unleashes hyperactive Bronson Pinchot (“Perfect Strangers”) as a 9,000-year-old alien whose spaceship crashes to earth.
Meego becomes caretaker to the three children of single father Dr. Edward Parker (played by Ed Begley Jr.).
But give “Meego” a solid advantage over “You Wish,” considering the presence of Pinchot, superior special effects and the family-show sorcery of Miller-Boyett-Warren Productions (whose sitcoms also include “Family Matters” and “Step By Step”).
And don’t forget “Jerry Maguire’s” Jonathan Lipnicki as the youngest of the Parker children.
Adults may find “Meego” out-of-this-world bad. The youngsters will love it.
“Gregory Hines” (CBS, premieres Friday):
This sitcom stumbles in its quest for cleverness and laughs its first time out, but the characters seem surefooted nonetheless. And Gregory Hines stands tall in what promises to be a sort of “Courtship of Matty’s Father - and Matty Too.”
Matty, 12, is just starting to date. So is his dad, Ben, who lost his wife 18 months before.
The humor arises from their similar confusion over the courtship scene, and from Ben’s realization that his boy is becoming a man, with all the attendant complications.
Dancer-singer-actor Hines plays Ben with the warmth and charm his fans would expect. Brandon Hammond is just fine as Matty.
“Players” (NBC, premieres Oct. 17):
This crime drama sounds like “Mod Squad” without the hippie politics.
Three street-smart con artists are paroled from prison and assigned as FBI operatives to deal with situations all those stuffy, by-the-books G-men can’t handle.
From Dick Wolf (“Law & Order” and “New York Undercover”), it stars actor-rapper Ice-T, Costas Mandylor (“Picket Fences”) and Frank John Hughes (“Homicide”).
No preview tape was available.
“The Visitor” (FOX, premieres Friday):
When last we saw John Corbett, he was Chris Stevens, KBHR’s mystical deejay on “Northern Exposure.”
Now, he makes a seamless transition into the character of Adam MacArthur, a mystical pilot who emerges from the wreckage of his downed craft to reveal himself as an Air Force pilot who vanished 40 years ago, sucked into the Bermuda Triangle.
He’s on the run from bad guys, both mortal and alien in nature. Along the way, he employs his mysteriously enhanced powers to help those in trouble.
Corbett is likable as MacArthur. And yet … with even one viewing, this “Visitor” betrays a certain been-there, seen-that sameness.
Saturday
“C-16” (ABC, premieres Sept. 27):
The beard and shaggy haircut say he’s a renegade. The rimless glasses say he’s a brain and a leader. The Southern twang in his voice (which seems to fade in and out) says that, underneath it all, he’s a good guy.
As agent John Olansky, Eric Roberts heads up a varied but uniformly dedicated squad on this solidly produced action hour.
“C-16” is slick, smart and as full of crimefighting lingo as “NYPD Blue.” These G-men and -women solve their crimes, and viewers of all ages should enjoy seeing how.
“Total Security” (ABC, premieres Sept. 27):
For once, Steven Bochco seems to be just having fun. He has cooked up a colorful, even kooky crime drama with the loose-limbed zest another Steve (the prolific Stephen Cannell) exhibits.
Tough, no-nonsense Frank Cisco (James Remar) runs a firm that offers all manner of high-tech security services. His colleagues include Debrah Farentino and Bill Brochtrup (the receptionist of “NYPD Blue”).
But then Steve Wegman (James Belushi) wangles a job. He’s a fast-talking, comically unscrupulous cad who flies in the face of all Cisco believes in - yet seems ideal for handling certain unsavory chores.
It all seems promising, a re-enactment of Jim Rockford and Angel Martin (of Cannell’s classic “Rockford Files”), but on a much classier, sophisticated level, and with a team of other personnel thrown in.
The problem, at least in the preview episode: Off in his own storyline, Belushi is pigeon-holed as the comic relief while the rest of the show is deadly serious.
“Sleepwalkers” (NBC, premieres Nov. 1):
Sleep figures into lots of TV shows, usually supplied by the viewer. But this sci-fi drama means to explore sleeping and dreams - from the inside out.
Bruce Greenwood (“St. Elsewhere”) is Dr. Nathan Bradford, a neurophysiologist who has founded a clinic to study how dreams connect humans to the waking world. His gadgetry dispatches researchers into the dreams of his patients, to explore and sometimes tinker with the subconscious issues that plague them.
In his off-hours, Bradford uses himself as a guinea pig - to communicate with his comatose wife, with whom he can be reunited in the dreams they share.
But what if you’re stuck inside someone else’s nightmare without an escape hatch or a parachute? That’s the downside to Bradford’s work.
“Sleepwalkers” is a gripping hour with eye-popping visual effects. It should keep any viewer awake … even after it’s over.