Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 8, 1994 TAG: 9403080185
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: By JOHN J. O'CONNOR N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Appealing casts, clever scripts, loopy humor and even a serious issue or two: Quality entertainment has its unmistakable upside.
Powerhouse prime-time lineups on a single network don't come along that often. The all-time champion is still CBS, which back in 1973 turned Saturday night into a stay-at-home festival with "All in the Family," "M*A*S*H," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show" and "The Carol Burnett Show."
More recently, CBS nearly did it again with a Monday schedule that included "Murphy Brown" and "Northern Exposure" but then tumbled into weak spots, especially after the departure of Delta Burke from "Designing Women."
There is method in putting together such a lineup. The trick is in finding programs that, while perhaps very different in style and manner, will basically appeal to the same audience throughout an entire evening.
ABC's Tuesday schedule, anchored with "Roseanne," is strong. But audiences for the earlier Tuesday night programs like "Full House" and "Phenom" are not likely to hang around for "NYPD Blue" at 10.
On the other hand, viewers who like the offbeat, sophisticated comedy of NBC's "Mad About You" will have no problem two hours later with the often quirky "L.A. Law," skillfully brought back from the brink of cancellation by its executive producer, William M. Finkelstein.
NBC's strength on Thursdays is all the more remarkable in that the departure of the top-rated "Cheers" was expected to leave the network badly hobbled. It's perhaps not surprising that two of the evening's remaining programs have close ties to "Cheers."
"Wings," now in its fifth year, comes from a creative team long associated with the old program, and "Frasier" is a direct spinoff, built around a character established on "Cheers."
The upshot for viewers is a smooth journey through several subtly different forms of situation comedy to an hour-long drama series that dips frequently into its own distinctive brand of humor.
A recent episode of "Mad About You" sailed fearlessly into the realm of virtual reality, giving Paul (Paul Reiser) and Jamie (Helen Hunt) further marriage jitters as they indulged romantic fantasies, he with the model Christie Brinkley, she with the tennis star Andre Agassi.
This is the kind of show on which when Jamie mentions rosemary chicken, Paul can ask, without missing a beat, "Isn't that Nixon's secretary?"
Nestled safely between stronger shows, "Wings" is finally coming into its own as the cast, including Tim Daly, Steven Weber, Crystal Bernard, Thomas Haden Church and Rebecca Schull, develops into a first-rate repertory company.
Daly, whose depiction of the cult leader David Koresh in a television movie was mesmerizing, has developed a keen talent for light comedy as the 35-year-old bachelor Joe. His recent affair with a 19-year-old was neatly brought off as what he called the perfect relationship: "hot and meaningless."
"Seinfeld," of course, is in a class by itself as its perfect cast pulls and pushes the minutiae of the world, meaning New York City, through their individual neuroses.
One recent episode managed to touch on Clark bars, sex manuals, those large cookies with black and white frosting, chocolate babkas, Jerry's childhood trauma of finding a hair in his farina and, for good measure, vomiting.
It all ended with Jerry observing that because 77 percent of a person's body heat is lost through the top of the head, "you can go ice skating naked if you've got a good hat." Special. And on a good night, terrific.
"Frasier" is a good show that keeps getting better, especially in the scenes between Kelsey Grammer in the title role and David Hyde Pierce as his brother, Niles, the type of uptight snob who can say of a cafe waiter, "The man has community college written all over him."
Some Thursdays are better than others. But most viewers, I suspect, won't be reaching too often for the remote control over the course of the evening.
Memo: Story ran in all editions Thursday, March 10, 1994