THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 25, 1995 TAG: 9502230038
SECTION: TELEVISION WEEK PAGE: 1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 145 lines
AS ``TOM CLANCY`S Op Center'' unfolds on NBC Sunday night at 9, the incoming director of the fictitious National Crisis Management Center gets the bad news from one of his deputies.
``There's still plenty of trouble out there. And some of it will find us.''
The Cold War is over. The Berlin Wall is down. The Soviet Union has collapsed. In the NBC miniseries, which concludes Monday at 9 p.m., the President appoints a character played by TV's Great Stone Face, Harry Hamlin, to phase out the crisis management center located at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C.
Hamlin's character, Paul Hood, sees the Op Center as a ``Cold War monument without a mission.'' No sooner has he spoken those words when bad news does, indeed, find the folks in Op Center.
Renegade members of the Russian secret police steal nuclear warheads from a site in the Ukraine, with plans to sell them to the highest bidder. It's up to Hamlin and his colleagues - including Carl Weathers, Bo Hopkins, John Savage, Lindsay Frost and the constantly gruff Wilford Brimley - to retrieve them.
``While there is no conflict between superpowers in our world today, there are still bad guys out there who don't like the United States of America. In the Op Center, we created a place staffed by people who are trained to manage any worldwide crisis when it develops,'' Clancy said when he met with TV writers in Los Angeles not long ago. The ``Op Center'' project was conceived by Clancy and Steve Pieczenik.
There's a twist to Clancy's involvement in ``Op Center.'' In the past, Hollywood bought the rights to such Clancy novels as ``The Hunt for Red October'' and ``Patriot Games,'' and then turned them into films. For NBC, Clancy and Pieczenik first conceived the miniseries and then launched the ``Op Center'' novel, which is largely the work of Jeff Rovin.
If ``Op Center'' clicks in the ratings - and it is a corking-good thriller that should draw a large audience here in military-minded Hampton Roads - don't be surprised if NBC launches an ``Op Center'' series. ``I certainly had a good time doing this project and see no reason why I couldn't continue,'' said Hamlin, whose career has cooled off considerably since he was the No. 1 hunk on ``L.A. Law.''
Don't look for Hamlin's character, political appointee Hood, to have the dash and daring of Clancy's other hero, Jack Ryan. He mostly stands around the Op Center, looking faintly fatigued, asking for suggestions. Clancy and Pieczenik dispatch the Navy and Army to do the heavy lifting in ``Op Center,'' which could have been sub-titled ``The President's Mistress is a Spy,'' or ``Protecting the National Security Can Cost You a Marriage.''
There are sub-plots that involve Deidre Hall as a TV reporter who sleeps with the President (Ken Howard) to pry state secrets out of him, and Kim Cattrall as Hamlin's wife, who doesn't understand that he has to work late in order to save the world.
She hates it when an international crisis messes up her party plans.
Best performance in ``Op Center'': Rod Steiger's cameo as an old Communist hard-liner named Kushnerov who assists his former enemies in the Op Center. He longs for the good old days, when the Soviets had thousands of nuclear-tipped warheads pointed in our direction. ``You would have made an excellent adversary,'' Kushnerov tells Hood.
CBS also uncorks a four-hour miniseries starting Sunday. It's that embarrassment of riches known as the February sweeps.
On CBS, Sidney Poitier stars in the saga of the people of all colors who settled the Oklahoma territory in the 1880s in ``Children of the Dust,'' starting Sunday at 9 p.m.
Farrah Fawcett shows up in a small role as the depressed and depressing frontier wife of Michael Moriarty, late of ``Law & Order.'' Part 2 is Tuesday at 9 p.m.
The suave, sophisticated Poitier, who plays the half-black, half Cherokee scout in ``Children of the Dust,'' said he's been dying to break out of character and climb up on a horse. ``The first film I saw was a Western. I grew up watching them. The cowboys were my heroes. I always wanted to be one. Upon arriving in California, I was quite disappointed to learn that most movie cowboys were actors who lived in a place called Hollywood,'' Poitier told the TV press in Los Angeles.
While cable doesn't concern itself with ratings sweeps, the folks at HBO put on a film Saturday that is sure to draw away a large number of viewers from the four major networks. ``Citizen X,'' which premieres at 8, is about a serial killer who murdered 52 people in Russia between 1982 and 1990. This film, in which Stephen Rea and Donald Sutherland play the Russian government officials who eventually track down Andrei Chikatilo, is based on Robert Cullen's book.
Trouble is, HBO Pictures hasn't captured the brisk pacing of Cullen's book, which is in a class with Truman Capote's ``In Cold Blood.'' On HBO, ``Citizen X'' takes an awful long time to get going as it dwells on the incompetent bureaucrats who weren't all that eager to catch the man ambushing young people near train stations, stabbing them to death and mutilating them in a sexual frenzy. They wanted to keep a lid on the killings because the world must never know that communism can be just as decadent as democracy.
Be warned that there are several graphic scenes of violence in ``Citizen X.'' Max von Sydow all but steals this picture as the psychiatrist to whom the serial killer confesses his crimes.
``He was drawn to the project by the quality of the script,'' said producer Tim Marx. ``It's an incredible cast.''
And speaking of the incredible, how about the revelations in the deliciously trashy Fox miniseries, ``Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story,'' which begins Tuesday night at 8 and concludes on Thursday?
This unauthorized biopic - that's a show biz phrase - stars Patsy Kensit as Farrow and Dennis Boutsikaris as Woody Allen, her lover, the father of one of her seven children and eventually her foe in court.
As TV trash films go, this is superior to the pictures about Roseanne and O.J. Simpson, which Fox aired in recent months. Kensit makes a darn good Mia, who has to face the awful truth here. Woody is turned off by the scar left after her C-section following the birth of their son, and looks elsewhere for recreation in bed.
He finds it with Farrow's adopted daughter, touching off a scandal that hasn't diminished Allen's standing in the film community. He's just had a picture nominated for seven Oscars.
Before the scandal involving Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi, erupted, Allen gave Farrow a gift of $1 million. Was it his way of soothing a guilty conscience?
Elsewhere on the tube in the days to come, The Learning Channel Thursday at 5 p.m. focuses on a Hollywood hero who hasn't been in the supermarket tabloids nearly as often as Woody and Mia. TLC's ``Legends of Hollywood'' deals with Arnold Schwarzenegger. . . . Another staunch conservative is examined this week, as PBS' ``Frontline'' series presents a two-hour profile of Rush Limbaugh, the far-right broadcaster, at 9 p.m. Tuesday. . . . The folks from National Geographic who have been producing compelling TV documentaries for 30 years are at again on Wednesday night at 8 with ``Great White Shark'' on NBC. Would you believe that these sharks with the bad press can be social?. . . That very cool and offbeat private eye, Anna Lee, returns to A&E Tuesday at 9 p.m. in ``The Cook's Tale.'' Imogen Stubbs stars in the title role as the first TV detective of the MTV age. . . . In case you missed the recently restored ``My Fair Lady'' on The Disney Channel, fret not because it will be repeated Saturday at 9 p.m. followed by the special that deals with how the film and soundtrack were restored. . . . Jimmy Smits, who recently showed a great deal of flesh on ``NYPD Blue,'' lands in the Old Testament on Showtime Sunday at 8 p.m. in ``Solomon and Sheba.'' Halle Berry is cast as Nikaule, the virgin Queen of Sheba. Showtime says it's the first time an African-American actress has been cast in the role. Smits, who chases bad guys on ``NYPD Blue,'' is in the pursuit of frankincense here. . . . Bravo's salute to Black History Month continues Saturday at 8 with ``A Romantic Evening With Ray Charles.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
From left, John Savage, Carl Weathers, Harry Hamlin and Bo
Hopkins...
Photos
Stephen Rea...
Halle Berry...
by CNB