Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 12, 1994 TAG: 9401110161
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Long past the glory days of "Dr. Kildare" and "Marcus Welby, M.D.," the closest viewers can come to a medical fix is "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" or "Northern Exposure" - neither one a true hypochondriac's delight.
Writer-producer Walter F. Parkes figures this improves the prognosis for his new ABC series "Birdland," a medical drama with a twist: It focuses on the health of the mind, not the body.
"Birdland," premiering tonight at 10 on WSET (Channel 13), stars the dependably excellent Brian Dennehy as Dr. Brian McKenzie, chief of psychiatry at Riverside, a Northern California hospital.
"People like doctor shows. It's unusual that right now on television there's isn't a reigning popular medical show," Parkes said. "So if you can crack a way to approach the world of psychiatric medicine, there's great potential."
The "if" is key: Parkes concedes that selling a show based on a shrink to network executives was a bit difficult.
Psychiatrists or psychologists generally are not seen as people of action, fit heroes for a TV series. The image of a dour nursemaid for a parade of neurotics doesn't inspire thoughts of healthy ratings.
(OK, OK, it worked for "The Bob Newhart Show." But that's because we could laugh AT the patients. Medical drama calls for a little empathy, please).
So how to overcome the pitfalls of a psychiatric drama? Parkes and "Birdland's" co-creator Scott Frank decided there were two prime elements.
First, the series was set in a hospital, not in a private practice, to "present a more active and vibrant sense of what these sorts of doctors do and who they are," Parkes said.
The hospital allows the series to focus on characters at a moment of crisis in their lives, where intervention by psychiatrists has the potential to make a difference.
Mumbling about yuppie burnout is not enough to get you through the door at Riverside.
"This is not about people's neuroses or dealing with chronically ill people," Parkes said. In the premiere episode, for example, McKenzie digs into the past of a troubled teen-ager who plunged through plate glass.
The second key factor was Dennehy himself, Parkes said. No effete, office-bound aura clings to this robust actor: He can portray a medical man at once intelligent AND vibrant.
"We wrote [the pilot] having heard he would never do a series," Parkes says. "We named the character Brian McKenzie and described him as a big, burly guy. We just felt that was the way to break the stereotype of a psychiatrist."
McKenzie is divorced, a subpar father, a borderline gambling addict and a 50-something guy in a doubtful relationship with a 30-year-old woman (Lindsay Frost). Forget the saintly Welby; this is a doctor for the real-medicine '90s.
So why did the supposedly series-shy Dennehy agree to star? He hasn't submitted to the rigors of weekly TV since the short-lived ABC sitcom "Star of the Family" in 1982, and he doesn't want for choice TV movie roles.
"I haven't got the vaguest [expletive] idea," the actor replies breezily, interviewed by phone from the "Birdland" set in Vancouver.
He elaborates.
"I got to the point a couple years ago when my movie career - nothing interesting seemed to be happening there. I said, `I'm going to start taking interesting parts.' If I see something that's interesting, I don't care where it is.
"That's what happened here," Dennehy said. "Birdland's" creators "had written a great pilot, characters. I decided the hell with it, I'm going to do it."
The series' title - a cynical nickname bestowed by staff members on Riverside - is an echo of perhaps the best medical series ever on television, "St. Elsewhere."
The 1982-88 NBC drama, set in the seedy St. Eligius hospital, was a poignant, sharp-witted blend of drama, satire and memorable characters.
If "Birdland" matches up, it could be just what the HMO ordered.
Elsewhere in television
TNT's "Our Favorite Movies," which pairs celebrity hosts with showings of classic films, kicks off an eight-week run. At 8 p.m. Thursday, country singer Travis Tritt hosts "Jailhouse Rock." Other hosts include actors Laurence Fishburne ("The Defiant Ones") and Jeff Daniels ("Bananas"). Most colorful combination: cross-dresser RuPaul and the musical "Gypsy."
by CNB