ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 26, 1996 TAG: 9608270011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
SOURCE: JENNIFER BOWLES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Whether you like it or not, the networks are taking you back to school this fall.
The classroom is the centerpiece of five new shows - there's wanna-be entertainers who turn to teaching to pay the bills, an ex-Marine who teaches inner-city kids and a working-class widow who goes to an Ivy League college.
The trend has not gone unnoticed.
``Yeah, can you do something about that?'' asked Dennis Rinsler, executive producer of UPN's ``Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher.''
Veteran TV producer Don Reo, whose show ``Pearl'' is among the group, had a simple explanation for the glut of educationally themed shows.
``Everybody copies what I do,'' Reo said. ``They just watch me and whatever I'm doing, everybody else tries to jump on the bandwagon. That's the only plausible explanation I can come up with.''
Kidding aside, one can take a look at recent big-screen successes that focused on teachers - ``Mr. Holland's Opus'' with Richard Dreyfuss and Michelle Pfeiffer's ``Dangerous Minds'' - and put two and two together.
In fact, ``Dangerous Minds'' itself is coming to the small screen in the form of a dramatic series on ABC.
``It's not so much everyone is imitating `Mr. Holland's Opus' so much as I think the movie maybe reminded everybody that this is sort of a time-honored genre that really had been getting short shrift of late on television,'' said Peter Noah, executive producer of the teacher sitcom ``Mr. Rhodes.''
Reo, whose ``Pearl'' stars Rhea Perlman as a widow who is accepted to a Yale-like university, said television often borrows from the movies.
``I looked at a lot of movies that were college-themed while I was writing the pilot and drew from all of them,'' said Reo, rattling off ``Educating Rita,'' ``Paper Chase'' and others. ``It pays to look at them just to see what worked and didn't work.''
Probably a good thing since two recent teacher-themed shows flunked out: ``Matt Waters,'' a drama starring Montel Williams, was a bomb on CBS earlier this year, and Meredith Baxter's sitcom, ``The Faculty,'' won't return on ABC this fall. On the other hand, the college sitcom ``Boston Common'' was renewed by NBC.
Of the new shows this fall, three are similar in that they revolve around fish-out-of-water teachers and all three feature actors who have been stand-up comics at one time or another:
* NBC's ``Mr. Rhodes'' stars Tom Rhodes as a longhaired, jeans-wearing, down-on-his-luck novelist who turns to teaching at a private prep school.
* The WB's ``Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher'' stars Mitch Mullany as a wanna-be actor who becomes a substitute teacher at an urban middle school.
* Steve Harvey stars in the WB's ``The Steve Harvey Show'' as an ex-musician who reluctantly takes a job teaching music at an inner-city high school when his royalty checks stop coming.
``I had no idea that there were these other teacher show ideas,'' said Rhodes. ``Of course, you hope that your thing is going to be the most original thing in the world.''
When pitched ideas for a series, Rhodes said he ``got so many bad, cheesy horrible ideas thrown at me. ... By the time the teacher idea came around, I was thrilled. I thought, `Yeah, I could actually picture myself doing that.'''
But which of the three teachers gets an ``A''? None of the above.
That honor goes to Malcolm McDowell in ``Pearl.'' Known more for movies than television, the British actor is delightfully crafty as an arrogant humanities professor who gives the street-wise Pearl a run for her money.
For serious students, ``Dangerous Minds'' is the only drama among the lot. But don't expect Michelle Pfeiffer at the head of the class.
This series stars Annie Potts, who's known more for her comedic roles such as ``Designing Women'' yet makes a fine substitute playing Louanne Johnson, a former Marine who teaches street-tough students.
Rapper Coolio, who sang the movie's popular theme ``Gangsta's Paradise,'' has a recurring role as a human development counselor.
``Our show is really trying to deal with real issues that confront these kids,'' said ``Dangerous Minds'' executive producer Andrew Schneider.
``We have humor in it, but we're trying to deal with something in a serious way, to really delve in in a deeper way perhaps more than a sitcom would.''
Probably true, although the creators and executive producers behind ``Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher'' were teachers in tough New York City schools for 10 years and are sure to inject a dose of reality into their show, as well.
In the pilot, for instance, Nick Freno and the other teachers are taught to defend themselves from robbers with a clipboard and a pen - a method that Rinsler and his partner Marc Warren were actually taught.
``The show's about what happened to us when we started teaching,'' said Rinsler. ``We had just gotten out of college and we related more to the kids than the authority figures. So when the principal came in the room and said `what's going on in here?' we would jump like the rest of the kids. We weren't used to being in charge.''
LENGTH: Medium: 91 linesby CNB