THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 8, 1996 TAG: 9601060077
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: B2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
``MURDER ONE,'' with Lynchburg native Dylan Baker in the cast, returns to ABC tonight at 10, where it butts heads with another blue-chip drama, ``Chicago Hope,'' on CBS.
As philosopher Yogi Berra once said, it's deja vu all over again.
``ER,'' the breathless medical drama on NBC, ran ``Murder One'' out of the 10 p.m. Thursday night time slot last year faster than they wheel gunshot victims into surgery. Now, Steven Bochco's very expensive lawyer series, which will deal with nothing but the ``Goldilocks Murder Case'' from now on, dukes it out with the CBS docs.
It's another one of those ``Crank-up-the-VCR, Ma'' nights - like Sunday night at 8, when the question is, do you tape ``Cybill'' and watch ``Mad About You'' or vice versa? And like Friday night at 10, when the question is, do you tape ``Picket Fences'' and watch ``Homicide: Life on the Street'' or vice versa?
``Give us a try tonight,'' Baker said on the phone from Manhattan, where he spent the holidays before returning to Southern California to resume shooting the final eight episodes of ``Murder One.''
Baker, playing Los Angeles Detective Arthur Polson, has worked in 15 episodes of ``Murder One,'' and he still doesn't know if the man charged with taking the life of a 15-year-old girl in a drugs-and-sex episode - an actor named Neil Avedon played by Jason Gedrick - is guilty as charged.
As ``Murder One'' returns to prime time tonight, the producers give an assist to clueless viewers by summing up the first eight episodes in a five-minute introduction. What follows, ``Chapter Nine,'' is superior TV drama in which the business of selecting a jury is cooly dealt with by Ted Hoffman for the defense in competition with prosecutor Miriam Grasso.
Hell in pumps, Hoffman calls her.
You will see in this episode that trials are often won and lost not by the lawyers but by how wisely experts in predicting human behavior choose the jurors. Are you listening, Marcia Clark?
Also featured tonight is a subplot in which a deranged fan of the Avedon character (the fan is played wonderfully by Debra Christofferson) puts Avedon and Hoffman (Daniel Benzali) at risk. It's the best episode so far in an uncommonly compelling drama.
If ``Murder One'' were to dry up and blow away because ABC didn't find the proper time slot, it would be as big a loss as canceling ``My So-Called Life'' before its time.
``We are most optimistic about the show's future,'' said Baker, who studied at the College of William and Mary for 2 1/2 years before earning his degree at Southern Methodist University in Texas. He also studied at Yale.
Baker is a Virginian with deep roots in the commonwealth. His mother, Marion T. Baker, is a lawyer in Lynchburg who is about to enter her 80s.
His character, the deadpan Polson, is forever in Hoffman's face, telling the lawyer in the $1,000 suits that his client is guilty, guilty, guilty! Never mind that another suspect turns up and is jailed tonight.
``We've got the right guy,'' Baker tells Hoffman, pointing to Avedon.
This is a small but delicious role for Baker.
He created the Polson character after hanging out with Los Angeles detectives before filming began. Baker sees his character as a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week workaholic ``who is generally in a bad mood.''
Detective Polson is not yet a finished work. ``I find more and more of him as I go along week after week,'' Baker said. There are many twists and turns to come in the episodes ahead, said Baker, but even after 15 scripts, nobody in the cast knows how Avedon's trial will come out.
``We've been told the producers intend to film three different endings,'' Baker said. by CNB