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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 1, 1994                   TAG: 9406010051
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By KEN PARISH PERKINS CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

`MY SO-CALLED LIFE' A TOUGH SELL FOR ABC

What works at 8 may bomb at 9 or 10. What soars on Tuesdays may die quickly on Wednesdays. One wrong move can mean a quick exit for a good show that otherwise could have logged several seasons.

With this in mind, there's no wonder "My So-Called Life" presented ABC with a few more problems than usual.

The drama, one of six new shows premiering this fall on the network, takes place in Three Rivers, a fictional, working-class Pittsburgh suburb. It's designed as a coming-of-age tale told from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl in a dark, grim tone, the flip side of "Beverly Hills, 90210" or most other TV teen-age dramas, for that matter.

In fact, when we first meet Angela Chase, she's in something of a suicidal funk.

She can't eat, can't sleep, and seems to cringe whenever she's in the same room as her mother.

As the Chase family - mom, dad, Angela and 10-year-old Danielle - gathers at the dinner table, we're privy to Angela's thoughts via her voice-over narration. "Lately," she says, staring intently across the table while puncturing peas with a knife, "I can't even look at my mother without wanting to stab her repeatedly."

Attending school, she muses, is little different than escaping daily drive-by shootings. "You're lucky to get out of here alive."

Anne Frank, she tells her stunned teacher, was "lucky. She was trapped in this attic for three years with this guy she really, really liked."

Angela dyes her hair and dumps her friends for a spirited new acquaintance who thinks it's cool to get so drunk she can't remember what she did the night before.

One night the acquaintance is almost raped. Angela leaps on the attacker's back, is knocked down, and ends up being escorted home in a police car.

Talk about wonder years. Talk about tough sells.

"My So-Called Life" languished on the now-what-can-we-do-with-this? shelf at ABC for nearly two years before finding its way to 8 p.m. Thursdays, up against NBC's surging "Mad About You" and CBS' promising new hourlong comedy adventure "Due South."

Already considered a difficult project to get on the air, let alone succeed, "Life" complicates matters by also delving into the lives of Angela's parents, played by Bess Armstrong and Tom Irwin.

"What initially sold me on this series was the fact that it quickly lets the viewer know that we won't run from the complex family drama we know exists but is never really discussed," says Irwin.

Like any dad who suddenly realizes his daughter is sexually mature, Irwin's Graham Chase is speechless when Angela passes him wearing nothing but a towel.

Her narrated line: "My breasts are coming between us."

Graham and Patty (Armstrong) met in high school: she the popular homecoming queen; he the nerd few people noticed. They met again later, fell in love, got married and started a family.

Now approaching 40, they're starting to question the decisions they made, their marriage, themselves. Patty is running a family printing business with Graham as her reluctant employee.

He always wanted to be a chef, and spends most of the pilot either in the kitchen or playing referee for mother and daughter. He's by far the more insecure, passive of the two.

ABC's difficult task is to relate to both parents and teens, to make the show's audience well-rounded enough to get ratings, maximize advertising revenues, stay on the air.

But do parents want to recall teen angst on a weekly basis and will young viewers find Angela's adventures and intensities too painful or depressing?

Irwin is aware of the odds. "The danger in this kind of material is that it can often be so introspective it becomes self-indulgent," he says. "We've been very careful to make sure that's not the case. Our objective is certainly not to whine. It's merely to give television something we feel it may be lacking when it comes to young people. Maybe even when it comes to older people. And that's honesty."