
DATE: Saturday, November 1, 1997            TAG: 9710310118

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Larry Bonko

                                            LENGTH:  154 lines

SWEEPS AT STAKE NETWORKS' SPECIALS ARE NO GUARANTEE OF QUALITY VIEWING

LET THE NOVEMBER sweeps begin!

Bring on Angela Lansbury one more time as incorrigible snoop Jessica Fletcher. Show us 1997 Los Angeles coping with the Frankenstein monster.

``You have no heartbeat. No blood pressure. No pulse. And your facelift is totally gross.''

Give us Whitney Houston playing a rusty, jive-talking fairy godmother who has a hard time turning a pumpkin into Cinderella's coach because she hasn't cast a spell in 600 years.

Take us to the top of windswept Mount Everest. Carry us to the cockpit of a plane transporting a nuclear warhead about to vaporize Washington, D.C.

Beam us aboard the starship Voyager as it comes under attack by forces set on obliterating civilizations. Give us plenty of warning when Drew Carey plans to bare his butt. And please bring Agent Mulder back from the dead on ``The X-Files,'' if, indeed, he did shoot himself in a moment of despair.

Now that David Letterman has returned from vacation, let the November sweeps begin!

The good thing about the Nielsen sweeps is you're guaranteed to see new episodes of your favorite shows as networks strive to deliver big audiences to affiliates who set advertising rates for 1998.

They pump up sitcoms, give dramas new twists and turns.

Examples: On an episode of ``Friends,'' Ross falls for a paleontologist who's a terrible housekeeper. Charlie on ``Party of Five'' comes down with Hodgkin's disease. Chuck Norris plays a dual role on ``Walker, Texas Ranger.''

The bad thing about the November sweeps is that networks don't mind pre-empting some of your favorite shows to put on an overstuffed miniseries, which should come with a warning label: Contains sex, violence and B-grade dialogue such as, ``If the truth gets out, we'll all be ruined.''

That line is heard in ``Ken Follett's The Third Twin,'' which CBS will air Sunday, Nov. 9, and Tuesday, Nov. 11, pre-empting ``Michael Hayes'' and ``Dellaventura.'' To put on Part 2 of ``House of Frankenstein,'' NBC on Monday, bumps ``Fired Up'' and ``The Naked Truth.''

You lose here, couch potatoes.

While ``Fired Up'' and ``Naked Truth'' will never make you forget ``The Mary Tyler Moore Show,'' you're better off with Sharon Lawrence and Tea Leoni than the cast of the too-silly-to-be-scary ``House of Frankenstein 1997,'' in which the monster is played by that ``Crazy'' Joe Davola guy (Peter Crombie) from ``Seinfeld.''

In Los Angeles, where looks are everything, the horribly disfigured Frankenstein monster rides buses and dines in busy restaurants, but nobody stares.

Yeah, right.

And how come the creature from the 1800s is so 20th century glib? Did Dr. Frankenstein give him the brain of William Buckley?

``The House of Frankenstein 1997'' is the bad and the ugly of the November sweeps. The good is ``Into Thin Air: Death on Everest,'' which ABC shows Sunday, Nov. 9. It's about the ascent on Mount Everest last year that took eight lives.

Fox is less inclined to put on sweeps spectaculars but does check in with the uplifting ``Prisoners Out of Control'' on Tuesday at 9 p.m. and ``Greatest Magic Trucks Revealed'' on Nov. 24 at 9 p.m. Something really special on Fox would be a week when Dr. Michael Mancini of ``Melrose Place'' didn't have sex.

Here are bite-size reviews of some November sweeps programming:

Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella,'' ABC, Sunday, 7 to 9 p.m. Brandy Norwood sells records by the millions, and she is the cute, cool teen on ``Moesha,'' but she is way out of her league playing Cinderella. The Rodgers and Hammerstein classics overwhelm her.

This first musical in ``The Wonderful World of Disney'' series suffers when Houston isn't around. Whoopi Goldberg and Jason Alexander appear in roles they could have phoned in. Considering all the money ($12 million) wasted here, call it ``Sinderella.''

The color is dreadfully vivid - much too purple. Speaking of color, the producers never explain how a white stepmother (Bernadette Peters) has a black daughter (Minerva played by Natalie Desselle) other than saying it's a rainbow cast.

Disney on Nov. 16 revives ``Oliver Twist'' with Richard Dreyfuss playing Fagin.

``Into Thin Air: Death on Everest,'' ABC, Nov. 9 at 9 p.m. It's slow going at first in this TV movie adopted from Jon Krakauer's bestseller, but once the talking ends and the climbing begins, you'll be reluctant to leave your La-Z-Boy.

The theme is that no matter how rich you are and no matter how much high-tech gear you have - people pay thousands to be guided up Everest - the mountain will defeat you if you are careless or ignore the guides' advice.

``I've decided to enjoy the simpler things in life and not go into Everest's death zone again,'' said Dale Krause, who survived the 1996 climb. To use Krakauer's words, this is a suspense and adventure story about ``the staggering unreliability of the human mind at high altitude.''

``House of Frankenstein 1997,'' NBC, Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. ``Go out and get some crosses.'' That's the advice from police in Los Angeles as a winged, musclebound Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster (thawed from a large block of Arctic ice) create more chaos than a 6.5 earthquake.

The look and tone of this mini-series is all wrong. With the bright Los Angeles sunshine and all, it's way too happy-looking. It's darn near as cheery as ``Cinderella.''

The acting is better in Roger Corman films. Why didn't the producers take a clue from ``Buffy, the Vampire Slayer'' or ``Kolchak: The Night Stalker'' and do heavy drama with a light touch? Trash.

``Murder, She Wrote: South by Southwest,'' CBS, Sunday, 9 p.m. Jessica Fletcher's gentle sleuthing held viewers' attention for 12 years on CBS, but this is another time, and Lansbury's Fletcher is a weak sister compared to the gutsy female snoops we see on A&E and PBS. Give me Hetty Wainthropp any day.

``If I'm in danger, it won't be the first time,'' Jessica says while riding Amtrak with a witness to a murder (Mel Harris) who later is thrown off the train. Or is she? Fletcher will show up in other CBS specials in 1998. (CBS on Nov. 13 at 10 p.m. revives another TV golden oldie when Robert Stack returns to host an ``Unsolved Mysteries'' special.)

``Medusa's Child,'' ABC, Nov. 16, and Nov. 20, at 9 p.m. As outrageous and unbelievable network miniseries go, this one is watchable. A scientist, embittered because his wife (Gail O'Grady) is divorcing him, and the Pentagon canceled his project, rigs a thermonuclear device to explode on a plane carrying it to Washington, D.C.

The crew and passengers get caught in a bureaucratic tug of war. Should the plane carry the warhead out to sea and dump it? Or should it be saved and studied?

One more thing. When the crew (led by Vincent Spano) decides to land with the ``Medusa'' project aboard, a category 5 hurricane is tearing up the East Coast. ``Airport 1975'' meets the Weather Channel.

``What the Deaf Man Heard,'' CBS, Nov. 23, 9 p.m. Matthew Modine plays a character who is ``three-quarters fraud, one-quarter handyman'' in a small town in Georgia. Left on a bus by his irresponsible mother when he was 10, Sammy Ayers pretends he is a deaf mute. ``To build a suit of armor around myself,'' he says.

The townfolk talk freely in front of Ayers, who learns of real estate scams, moonshining and embezzlement. Modine, who took a vow of silence while filming this ``Hallmark Hall of Fame'' production in Wilmington, N.C., is just fine as the wise, whimsical Sammy.

``Ken Follett's The Third Twin,'' CBS, Nov. 9 and Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. The old evil-twin story is revived here with a twist you'll pick up late in Part 1. Twenty-seven years ago in a fertility clinic in Virginia - could this be a subtle reference to Norfolk's reputation in this area? - an in-vitro procedure went wrong.

The clones of a hunk played by Jason Gedrick are everywhere, and some of them are rapists and murderers. Who can tell them apart? CBS is pushing the ratings code with several suggestive scenes in which a biologist (Kelly McGillis) is menaced by the perverted bad twin. Larry Hagman - graying down to his bushy eyebrows - plays the scientist with SOMETHING TO HIDE.

Cloning? A scary thing, says Hagman, adding, ``Can you imagine hundreds of little Larry Hagmans running around?''

What could be scarier? Carey and his co-stars on ``The Drew Carey Show'' exposing their backsides, which they are threatening to do in a Nov. 12 episode. Let the November sweeps begin! ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos

Whitney Houston...

"House of Frankenstein"...

"Into Thin Air: Death on Everest"...

Ross falls for a ...

Drew Carey...

Photo

MICHAEL TIGHE/ABC

The four-hour miniseries ``Medusa's Child,'' starring Lori Loughlin,

left, and Gail O'Grady starts Nov. 16 on ABC.