THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604110087
SECTION: TELEVISION PAGE: 1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
TELEVISION in the week to come offers this programming to keep the ever- restless, short-attention-span, trigger-happy channel surfer interested:
Roseanne starts a new late-night variety show on Fox.
TBS reminds us that the 1996 Atlanta Olympics are coming up fast in ``100 Years of Olympic Glory.''
Tori Spelling again goes to work for Pop.
Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes appears on ``Saturday Night Live.''
CBS brings back a shameful time in Virginia's history - the slave trade.
You get all of this plus the conclusion of the Masters golf tournament on CBS this weekend starting at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
And it isn't even the May sweeps. Is this a great country or what?
Producer-director Bud Greenspan, who has been filming the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat at the Olympics since 1948, and will again do the official film in 1996, has produced a fine documentary and history lesson all in one in ``100 Years of Olympic Glory.'' It premieres on TBS Monday at 8:05 p.m., will repeat at 11:05 p.m., and be seen again Tuesday at 10:35 p.m.
It would have been easy for Greenspan to dig into his archives - he even has film of the 1896 games in Athens - and put together nothing but a reel of Olympic glory. A best-of-Olympics thing. Instead, he's chosen to tell stories of the heart.
``Some of the big stories in our special have to to do with people who didn't win, but who had the courage to keep trying until they crossed the finish line,'' said Greenspan when he met with TV writers in Los Angeles.
Who was the concert pianist who won three medals? Who was 30 and a mother when she won four gold medals in the 1948 Games? What American swimmer won five gold medals before he became a movie star?
Greenspan has the answers on TBS. (And so do I, at the end of this column).
The Learning Channel on Sunday has a three-hour block of programming that is a perfect companion to Greenspan's Olympic story: ``Peak Performance,'' which premieres at 8 p.m., and repeating at 11, is about three athletes preparing for the Atlanta Olympics. Ahmad Rashad hosts.
Louis Gossett Jr. and Kate Nelligan co-star on CBS Sunday at 9 p.m. in ``Captive Heart: The James Mink Story,'' which is about the son of a freed slave played by Gosett who in the 1800s settles in Canada and becomes a millionaire businessman. He thinks that he is marrying off his pretty, well-educated, 17-year-old daughter (Rachel Crawford) to a rich and genteel Toronto bachelor.
Turns out that the man is a slave trader who, after the wedding, peddles young Mary to the owner of Virginia planation for $2,000 at a Richmond auction. The rest of the film is about Mink rescuing his daughter from slavery and taking revenge against the man who sold her into bondage.
``This film reminds us of what we need to be reminded about occasionally, which is what a sick and sorry institution slavery was,'' said Gossett. A slightly better than usual made-for-TV flick.
Roseanne, who will do her ABC sitcom for one more season and then take some time off, tries her hand as TV producer (and sometimes star) of ``Saturday Night Special'' on Fox beginning Saturday night at 11. Roseanne has been quoted as saying that sketch comedy on TV today (``Mad TV,'' ``Saturday Night Live,'' ``The Dana Carvey Show'') is pretty lame. White-guy college humor, she calls it in Entertainment Weekly magazine.
With the Fox show, Roseanne is promising shorter and snappier skits.
She calls it ``MTV meets `Laugh-In.' ''
Roseanne's chief rival, the ``Saturday Night Live'' gang on NBC, welcomes former White House hopeful Forbes on Saturday night at 11:30. If he showed any wit or comedic flair on the campaign trail, your humble columnist missed it.
Also on NBC Saturday night, Tori Spelling takes a break from ``Beverly Hills 90210'' to help her producer dad, Aaron Spelling, jack up interest in ``Malibu Shores'' at 8. Tori plays a waitress.
Can there possibly be anything more on TV in the week to come that is better than this? Lots.
To mark National Holocaust Remembrance Week, PBS' ``Frontline'' on Wednesday at 8 p.m. airs ``Shtetl,'' the story of how the Nazis in 1942 wiped out the village of Bransk and all its residents. Filmmaker Marian Marzynski, who as Jew survived the Nazi purge because she was hidden by a Catholic family, opens the past by filming in Poland and Israel.
Also on PBS, on Tuesday at 8 p.m. from ``Nova,'' is a story of another kind of terror - ``The Bombing of America,'' which shows how easy it is for a Unabomber or Oklahoma City bomber to make and plant explosives without leaving clues. ``Nova'' says more than 3,000 bombings or attempted bombings took place in the United States in 1994. Hard to believe.
The Learning Channel doesn't generally chase the same stories as ``Hard Copy'' or ``American Journal,'' but TLC knows a good scandal when it sees it. Hence ``Royal Secrets,'' an expose of European nobility to premiere Saturday night at 10. Homosexual transvestites on the throne? Monarchs who wore necklaces made of human skulls? A king with more than 100 mistresses?
You bet.
``This series shows what happens when humans are consumed with power,'' said John Ford, senior vice president of programming at TLC.
It's a 13-part series from murderers to warmongers to sorcerers.
The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences opens the doors to its Hall of Fame to these new members in ceremonies scheduled for CBS on Tuesday night at 8: Michael Landon, Jim McKay, Bill Moyers, Dick Van Dyke, Betty White and the producers Richard Levinson and William Link. Dick Clark hosts. The ceremonies took place before a black-tie audience in Los Angeles. Even Alan Brady would be impressed.
Audrey Hepburn, who on April 28 at 10 p.m. will be saluted on Lifetime with the special, ``Intimate Portrait: Audrey Hepburn,'' will be seen on The Family Channel Sunday at 2 p.m. in her first TV movie, ``Love Among Thieves'' and in ``Two for the Road'' on April 28 at 5 p.m. WGNT on Saturday night at 8 has the Audrey Hepburn picture, ``My Fair Lady.''
And why, after spending much money to make over David Letterman's set in Manhattan, is CBS on Monday beginning re-runs of ``The Late Show'' from Los Angeles? Stupid human trick.
As for those three Olympics puzzlers mentioned at the beginning of this column, here are the answers:
In 1948, Micheline Ostermeyer captured two gold medals and a bronze in track and field when she wasn't practicing on her piano.
Fanny Blankers-Koen was 30 and a mom when she won four gold medals in track and field at the '48 Games.
And, Johnny Weissmuller, star of the black and white ``Tarzan'' films, won five gold medals in the Paris and Amsterdam Olympics in 1924 and 1928. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
"Peak Performance" ...
by CNB