THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 17, 1994 TAG: 9409160044
SECTION: TELEVISION PAGE: 01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
LET THE DUEL of the doctors begin.
Network television revives the medical drama this season - ``Calling Doctor Welby, calling Doctor Casey, calling Doctor Kildare'' - with two series set in the same city and scheduled to air on the same night at the same time.
Isn't that dumb?
If you don't have a VCR, you'll have to choose between ``ER'' on NBC at 10 Thursday night and ``Chicago Hope'' on CBS, but the networks scheduled previews of these shows on different nights.
It's 8 p.m. Sunday for ``Chicago Hope'' and 9 p.m. Monday for ``ER.''
I like both, but not as much as I liked ``St. Elsewhere.'' My tastes run to quirky. ``ER'' is the better of the two because the pace is so fast. You'll never lose interest.
There is a crisis in almost every scene.
``Your hand is still attached. . . but not by much.''
The images are stark. You'll see a patient spit blood all over an intern.
``ER'' is about how hard it is to be a doctor who works 90 hours a week for $23,739 a year. Anthony Edwards is the star. Michael Crichton, who collaborated with Steven Spielberg to create the ``Jurassic Park'' movie blockbuster, is the show's executive producer.
If the scenes in the emergency room look like the real thing, it's no accident. The producers use nurses, technicians and medical students when they can. Crichton, who has a medical degree, wrote the pilot episode by digging back into his past.
``There is much of the experience I had in there. Although medicine has changed since I worked in an emergency room, the look and feel and texture of emergency-room medicine has not changed all that much. It is still very much a fast-moving place to work.''
John Wells, the co-executive producer, told TV writers in Los Angeles recently that he isn't fretting because NBC put his show up against ``Chicago Hope'' on CBS. That drama concentrates on a case or two at a time with surgeons who are well along in their careers.
Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger is this genius at Chicago Hope who can separate Siamese twins while placing bets with his bookie. ``Look at the shows as `Upstairs/Downstairs at the Hospital,' '' suggested Wells. ``I don't expect to see stories that happen in the surgical wing of their hospital to be happening in the emergency room of our hospital.''
On ``ER,'' as soon as you walk into the place, they stick an IV in your arm.
Standard procedure.
That doesn't happen on ``Chicago Hope.''
The first thing they do in that hospital is to drain your wallet.
New shows
Network television is hip deep in premieres of new shows, a dance that began on Aug. 25 when ABC introduced ``My So-Called Life.'' In the next six days, nine new series begin running in their regular time periods.
``Law & Order'' isn't a new series, but it looks new because the cast changes almost every season. On Wednesday at 10, ``Law & Order'' returns for a fifth season with Sam Waterston coming on board as assistant district attorney Jack McCoy. Thank heaven the cool Chis Noth is still there.
And let us not forget to break out peanuts and Crackerjack, because starting on Sunday at 8 p.m., PBS begins Ken Burns' 18 1/2-hour epic about life in America as seen from the batter's box: ``Baseball.''
Wednesday at 8, Bill Cosby returns to NBC in ``The Cosby Mysteries.''
Other tasty tidbits
Kids' show alert! Nickelodeon, which just may be the coolest channel on cable, begins its third season of ``Guts'' tonight at 6:30. It's a show on which kids live out their sporting fantasies, such as being suspended 15 feet up in the air for aerial jousting and stuff. This year, celeb guests check in from time to time.
HBO Pictures, which has produced some classy films of late, and won Emmys for the effort, has another on the way tonight at 8 with ``The Burning Season.'' It stars Raul Julia as the man (Chico Mendes) who was killed for fighting those who are relentlessly chopping down the Amazon rain forest - the planet's lungs. Sonia Braga and Edward James Olmos co-star.
It's a good flick, but loaded with images that are hard to take. Down in the Amazon, they burn people as well as trees that get in their way.
Olmos, who said it was tough going to make a movie in a jungle, told me in Los Angeles recently that the torching of the rain forests has slowed down. ``In the 1980s, they burned down a stretch of forest twice the size of California. Now they're down to yearly burning an area the size of Delaware.''
What a relief.
Friday at 8 p.m. on ``Biography,'' A&E details the life of schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, the ``ordinary citizen'' who was killed in the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986.
Marathon time! This week, it's the ``Saturday Night Live'' marathon on Comedy Central. I mean a marathon! The cable channel cuts loose with ``SNL'' at 7 a.m. on Sunday and keeps rolling ALL WEEK LONG! It's the channel's 20th anniversary salute to the NBC show. If only ``SNL'' was as good now as it used to be in the days of Gilda, Chevy, John, Dan, Eddie, Billy and Dennis.
On Sunday at noon, C-SPAN will focus on the Virginia senatorial race with a one-hour special, ``Campaign Almanac.'' C-SPAN is also reviving the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858 on Saturday at 1 p.m. and again on Sunday at 1 p.m. The shows will feature historical re-enactments of five of the seven U.S. senatorial election debates between Abraham Lincoln and incumbent Sen. Stephen A. Douglas.
If the ``MTV Video Awards'' were too, too gross for you, then I have just the show for you: ``America's Christian Music Awards,'' which will be seen at 9 p.m. Sunday on the Family Channel. There will be competition in 12 categories including favorite Christian rock CD.
Was Dracula for real? Come on. Vlad Tepes was a real prince. People who delve into these things say his bloody deeds were the inspiration for Bram Stoker's novel about Dracula. On Sunday at 9:30, you'll get a glimpse of Vlad's Romanian digs on ``Great Castles of Europe: Dracula's Castles'' on The Learning Channel. Consider it a warm-up for Tom Cruise's new Dracula flick that opens in November. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Watch the overworked, underpaid doctors of "ER" whch premiers Monday
night at 9. The drama will regularly air Thursday nights at 10.
by CNB