Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409280030
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Constable Benton Fraser is the most upright Mountie since Nelson Eddy. He's a fish out of water and one determined to swim upstream. You gotta love this guy, as the saying goes, as well as the show built around him, which airs Thursday nights on CBS.
Fraser, played with very precise perfection by Paul Gross, was introduced last season in the CBS movie of the same name. The incongruity of Fraser's mannerly decorum plopped down in the modern urban battleground of Chicago is played both for laughs and for poignancy, and it works every time.
The show is an outright delight, no buts about it.
Why the Mountie remains in the States is not fully explained. He says the other guys didn't like him up Canada way, and he still does a stint now and then standing guard at the Canadian consulate. But mostly he and his unlikely seen-it-all partner, Ray Vecchio (David Marciano, also terrific) run about solving crimes while perpetrating as little on-screen violence as possible.
In the premiere, they encountered a streetwise 13-year-old named Willie (Christopher Babers), who may be implicated in a $1 million bond heist. Fraser saw Willie swipe a lady's purse and chased him through the neighborhood and retrieved said purse. Later, Vecchio asked what happened to the kid. Fraser said he let him go. Why? ``Well, he apologized and promised never to steal again.''
Gross, who really is from Canada, brings a cheering guileless charm to the role that keeps Fraser from ever seeming merely sappy. Marciano is an expert foil. And the city of Chicago, featured in several prime-time series this season, looks spectacularly handsome, even the grungy parts.
``Due South'' is enough to give innocuous family entertainment a good name, and enough to give viewers of virtually any age a good time.
If ``Due South'' is an example of family entertainment at its best, CBS also, perversely enough, has a new series that is agonizingly corny and cutesy. Not only that, but it imitates a hit that aired a decade ago on another network.
It was 1984 when Michael Landon first strolled the ``Highway to Heaven'' for NBC. Now comes the CBS clone: ``Touched by an Angel,'' a one-hour fantasy drama airing Wednesday nights. Watching it is like inhaling too much helium; you can feel your brain floating up through the top of your head.
Indeed, viewers with low tolerance for precious whimsy probably found they had overdosed on pixie dust within the first 10 minutes of the premiere. That's when we met the dear little sprite who flitted down out of the clouds, mystical Monica (Roma Downey), romping barefoot through the desert. At a bus stop she learned from her mother superior (Della Reese) that she's just been promoted to caseworker, first class.
Each week Monica, the adorable darling, will help some poor mortal out of one dire strait or another. On the premiere, it was a wee little broth of a tyke of a lad in Caspar, Wyo., whose mommy upped and moved out to join another lady in a sort of road company ``Bagdad Cafe'' out in the desert.
It was up to Monica to put boy, Mommy and Daddy back together again. She started by signing on as nanny at the father and son's place. Then she cleverly maneuvered the estranged mom to a bar on the outskirts of - well, it seemed to be on the outskirts of the outskirts.
Since when do angels send people to bars? Perhaps executive producer and writer Martha Williamson was thinking of the tavern scene with Clarence the angel and George Bailey in ``It's a Wonderful Life.'' If only she had stopped at merely thinking of it.
Downey is certainly pretty, almost in a Maureen O'Hara way, but when she commences to twinkling and twittering, what you get is a new low in Maalox moments. Reese threatens to bring the show to life with each appearance. But that's a tough assignment. It would take a real angel to do it.
At one point Monica marvels at the persistence of us mortals. ``How do they do it?'' she asks. ``They get up every morning and start all over again. Takes a lot of courage to do that.'' Yes, especially if you're a TV critic and have to face treacle like this.
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB