Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 2, 1994 TAG: 9404020185
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JACKIE HYMAN The Associated Press
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
"There's one flaw, I feel, in the concept of the show," says Van Dyke, who stars in the Friday night comedy-drama with Scott Baio and Victoria Rowell. "I'm the head of internal medicine and most of the time I'm out solving crimes."
The physician-detective gets help from his son, police investigator Steve Sloan, played by Barry Van Dyke, one of the comic's four real-life children.
In fact, Barry Van Dyke, whose credits include "The Harvey Korman Show" and "Battlestar Galactica" provided the motive - not for murder, but for his father's return to series television.
"I was not looking for work at all. I had turned 65 and taken all my pensions and said goodbye," said Van Dyke, now 68. But then the opportunity to work with his son came up, and . . .
The comedian, who starred in the classic situation comedy "The Dick Van Dyke Show" from 1961-1966, received a Lifetime Achievement Award during the recent 8th annual American Comedy Awards, to be broadcast by ABC in May.
Sources give various totals, but Van Dyke himself puts his Emmy count at six. He also won a Grammy Award for a recording from the film "Mary Poppins," in which he starred with Julie Andrews, and a Tony Award for the Broadway musical "Bye Bye Birdie."
Keenly aware of his viewers, he says he has turned down a number of roles he didn't consider suitable.
"Ever since the original series, I realized we've always had a large kid audience, so I've always felt responsible to that," Van Dyke said. "With `Mary Poppins,' I'm on my third generation."
It was producer Fred Silverman who proposed he play a doctor who solves crimes. Van Dyke first appeared as Mark Sloan in an episode of the series "Jake and the Fatman," with an eye to spinning off a TV movie.
Silverman "said they would like to do a two-hour movie and that didn't sound too bad, and then there was another movie and another one. It all happened in little increments, so I didn't really know what was happening."
Suddenly he found himself out of retirement, shooting a one-hour series.
"This is something entirely new to me," the comedian said. "It calls on different muscles and different ways of looking at things.
"I'm one of those performers, I was made for the theater or sitcoms because I can give blinding speed for three hours or so, but 12 hours, I don't have the endurance," he said.
"Out of deference to my age, there is a cap of 10 hours a day. It's an ideal we shoot for. You can't leave in the middle of a scene."
by CNB