Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 11, 1994                   TAG: 9404110159
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By GREG DAWSON ORLANDO SENTINEL
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T EXPECT YOUR MAIL TO GET TO THESE PLACES

The road, the street, the place, the heights - all manner of geographical (topographical?) monikers.

Recently, for example, NBC premiered ``Winnetka Road'' (10 p.m.) a new soaper from producer Aaron Spelling, who also has given us ``Beverly Hills, 90210,'' ``The Heights,'' ``Melrose Place'' and ``2000 Malibu Road.''

You would think that, given the thousands and thousands of places in America, the annals of television would be thick with programs named for someplace.

You would be wrong, which is why it's a good thing I'm here to blow the lid off such misconceptions. My select committee of one has studied the matter, and here are my findings:

Of the hundreds of shows listed in The Complete Directory to Prime-Time Network TV Shows 1946-Present, fewer than 100 have titles with place names in them. And only a fraction of those have anything resembling an actual mailing address.

And here's my blockbuster finding:

The overwhelming majority of shows with addresses in the title deserved to be stamped ``Return to Sender'' or ``Insufficient plot, writing and acting.''

Oh heck, why not go all the way with this post-office metaphor: Most of these shows qualify as junk mail (see the Spelling list above).

Many of the shows I included on the place-name list are titled for general locales rather than specific addresses. Lotsa luck trying to deliver mail to ``Hawaii Five-O,'' ``The Streets of San Francisco,'' ``Hong Kong,'' ``Foley Square,'' ``Dallas,'' ``The Oregon Trail,'' ``The Mississippi,'' ``South of Sunset'' or ``Tribeca.''

``Where I Live'' just doesn't do it. Ditto ``Brewster Place,'' ``Flatbush,'' ``Brooklyn Bridge,'' ``Lime Street,'' ``The Street,'' ``Route 66,'' ``Flamingo Road,'' ``Dolphin Cove,'' ``Angel Street'' and ``Angel Falls.''

I think they could probably find ``The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'' and ``The Dukes of Hazzard,'' but you could forget anything mailed to the ``Man From Atlantis.''

And even if you had a name and street address, surely the postage would be prohibitive to ``The Planet of the Apes.'' (I wonder how Charlton Heston gets his National Rifle Association newsletter?)

Some places are so small that, despite sketchy addresses, you might be able to track down the intended recipients: ``Mayberry, R.F.D.''; ``Palmerstown, U.S.A.''; ``Gibbsville''; ``Key West''; ``Brisco County''; ``Bakersfield, P.D.''; and ``Eerie, Indiana.''

I know that some viewers would be shocked - shocked! - to learn that the U.S. Postal Service does not maintain offices on ``Fantasy Island,'' ``Gilligan's Island'' or at ``Petticoat Junction.'' However, UPS does deliver on Saturdays.

Eliminating all the shows with token connections to a place, we're left with only a handful whose titles come close to resembling an actual address, and they all lack something too.

If only ``Beverly Hills, 90210'' had a street and house number to go with the ZIP code.

If only we had a city and ZIP code for ``21 Beacon Street'' - a detective drama starring Dennis Morgan that aired for less than a season in 1959-'60.

The same goes for ``21 Jump Street,'' the Fox teen-cop series, and ``13 Queens Blvd.,'' a sitcom starring Eileen Brennan and Jerry Van Dyke that ran for four months in 1979.

Maybe the coolest postal title ever was ``77 Sunset Strip,'' the ABC series starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr. that epitomized hip in early '60s. (Remember Edd Byrnes and ``Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb''?)

``Sunset Strip's'' success spawned a copycat series with a title almost as cool: ``Surfside Six,'' starring Troy Donahue as a detective in Miami. (The late-but-unlamented ``Moon Over Miami'' was better, kids.)

That brings us to the two most famous place-name series in TV history - one notorious, the other meritorious:

``Peyton Place,'' the mid-'60s nighttime soap set in the mythical New England town of Peyton Place. This is the way Spelling seems to be going with his newest soaper, but you can't get there from ``Winnetka Road.'' (To letter carriers: Beware of the dog.)