THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 6, 1995 TAG: 9505050068
SECTION: TELEVISION WEEK PAGE: 1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 194 lines
WOULD YOU BELIEVE it if I told you that crooner Bing Crosby was the first choice to play Columbo?
It's the gospel truth, say William Link and Richard Levinson, the writers who created the character of the shrewd slob who has evolved into an unlikely TV icon, a lovable homicide detective.
Ever met anyone lovable on ``NYPD Blue''?
Peter Falk, a relatively unknown actor in 1968 who was given the Columbo role after Crosby turned it down, breaks out the slept-in raincoat one more time Monday at 9 on ABC in ``Columbo: Strange Bedfellows.'' ABC retires the ``Matlock'' series after Sunday night's showing.
In this episode, the lieutenant gets roughed up by goons in the employ of a mob boss played a la Brando by Rod Steiger. George Wendt, the teddy bear barfly on ``Cheers,'' isn't many laughs here, as he plays a horse breeder who commits murder.
As with all villains in the Columbo dramas, which began with the Link-Levinson play called ``Prescription: Murder,'' Wendt thinks it will be a breeze to outsmart the lieutenant. We all know better.
``Columbo,'' said Falk in a recent interview for A&E Monthly magazine, ``is as tenacious as he is untidy. Playing him has been a completely satisfying experience.'' (A&E plays reruns of vintage Columbo episodes on Monday and Thursday at 2 p.m.)
It's been a lucrative experience for Falk. His salary per episode - Falk is also the show's executive producer - is said to be in the $500,000 range. He's grayer and heavier than he used to be, but Falk, at 69, is still a joy to behold as he sorts out clues, stopping suspects in their tracks with that famous phrase.
``And one more thing. . . ''
Every bit as enduring as Columbo, and just as endearing to viewers over the last 19 years, is the character played by Leo McKern. That would be the cagy British barrister, Horace Rumpole, who has returned of late to the PBS ``Mystery!'' series on Thursday night with all new episodes.
That's just half the good news for fans of Rumpole. WHRO, the PBS affiliate in Hampton Roads, is running 36 episodes of the ``Rumpole of the Bailey'' series Monday through Thursday at 11:30 p.m.
To make room for the eccentric defense lawyer married to ``she who must be obeyed,'' WHRO is moving the Charlie Rose talk show to 5:30 p.m. on June 12. You can still catch Rose at noon weekdays on radio, WHRV-FM (89.5).
``Because I wanted Rumpole to have as much a hard time at home as he had in court, I gave him a powerful wife whom he couldn't call `old darling,' his name for impossible judges,'' said ``Rumpole of the Bailey'' creator John Mortimer.
The image of Rumpole holding court at Pomeroy's Wine Bar, drinking claret and dropping cigar ashes on his waistcoat is darn near as familiar as Columbo scratching around a crime scene in his raincoat.
If only they could go on forever.
That's my cue to talk about the ABC series ``My So-Called Life.''
Sympathetic to viewers who want the series about teen angst to continue, MTV has been running the show daily since April. This weekend, in one final push to convince ABC brass that the show should be saved, MTV has scheduled ``The `My So-Called Life' Marathon.''
The marathon begins Saturday at 1 p.m., and resumes Sunday at 10 a.m.
Cheers to MTV for doing its part to spare from cancellation one of the most watchable family dramas to reach network TV in the last decade.
What's the sport of the chic? The run for the America's Cup.
Pretend you're chic by watching the best-of-nine competition in waters off San Diego, beginning Saturday at 4 p.m. on ESPN.
All hail Team Dennis Conner of the U.S. as it opens defense of the cup Saturday against Team New Zealand, not in the old favorite Stars & Stripes boat, but in the swifter Young America.
What's the week's TV menu without an overstuffed special or two? The viewing is hearty in the days to come with ``Nile: River of Gods'' on The Discovery Channel starting Monday at 8 p.m., and ``American Experience: The Way West'' on PBS, also beginning Monday night at 8.
Isn't this why VCRs were invented?
``The Way West'' on WHRO was produced by Lisa Ades and Ric Burns, whose brother, Ken, is a also a pretty fair documentarian. The 90-minute opener is about the frantic expansion westward in the U.S. starting with the gold rush of 1849.
In other episodes, Burns deals with the outrage of the U.S. breaking treaties with the Indians while exterminating the buffalo. To that, the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh said, ``We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game and what did they give our warriors and women? Rum, trinkets and then a grave.''
Epic TV here.
The same should be said for ``Nile: River of Gods,'' a study of the river that ties peoples and cultures together through a 4,000-mile stretch of Africa.
Historians say that civilization itself was created in its fertile lands. ``Only now has it been possible to make this film because the political turmoil which dominated the sources of the Nile in Ethiopia and Uganda for much of two decades is over,'' said ``Nile: River of Gods'' producer-director Michael McKinnon.
From this point on in the spring and summer of 1995, television will be concentrating on events of the last days of World War II. To mark the 50th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, A&E on Sunday at 8 p.m. hitches up with The History Channel to simulcast ``The History Channel Presents: The Last Days of World War II.''
The three-hour special begins with German dictator Adolph Hitler boasting that his Third Reich will last for more than a thousand years. Yeah, right. A history lesson too good to miss.
``The special about the last days of the war is remarkable for its wealth of detail,'' said Michael Kurtz, the vice president for special programming at the A&E networks.
On the lighter side of television dealing with World War II, A&E on Monday at 8 p.m. includes Betty Grable in its ``Biography'' series. See how a starlet with legs insured for $1 million helped to keep morale high among the GIs in ``Betty Grable: Behind the Pin-up.''
If there were a big war on today, who would be the GIs' favorite pin-up? Demi Moore? Sharon Stone? Brad Pitt? (These days it is also a woman's military.)
The Disney Channel's contribution to documenting war's end is a four-part series, ``World War II: A Personal Journey,'' which comes on Monday at 10 p.m. Before that, at 9 p.m. Monday, filmmaker George Stevens gives us the great war as seen through his camera lens in ``From D-Day to Berlin.''
When the networks engage in May sweeps' warfare, the artillery they use is darn near as heavy as the barrages of World War II. NBC on Sunday at 8 p.m. has the big one - ``Jurassic Park.''
It's only the highest-grossing film ever. Producer Steven Spielberg created the box office bonanza out of fossilized DNA samples.
This is the era when TV shows such as ``The Brady Bunch'' and ``The Addams Family'' have been revived as feature films, and it is also the time when feature films such as ``Freaky Friday'' are being re-created as TV fare.
Shelley Long switches bodies with her whiny daughter (Gaby Hoffman) on ABC Saturday night at 8 in ``Disney Family Films Presents Freaky Friday.'' As mom, the daughter can't walk in heels. As the daughter, mom likes chocolate syrup on her bananas.
``It's really interesting that movies are being re-made for television and television shows are being made into movies,'' said Long when she met with TV writers in Los Angeles recently. ``I don't know why that's happening, but it is, and it seems to be working out fine.''
The woman of many a male's fantasy when she played Diane Chambers on ``Cheers'' has evolved into an acceptable mom in the movies and TV with the Brady brood and now in ``Freaky Friday.'' She'll always be Diane in ``Cheers'' reruns.
Continuing our parade of hits to come on TV in the week to ahead, note that on Tuesday at 3 and 6 p.m. MTV puts on ``The Affordable Show'' about eight women shopping on a budget. . . . This is for all of you former students of classic literature who remember Shakespeare as dull and dreary: On Sunday at 9 p.m., PBS premieres ``Much Ado About Nothing'' on ``Mobil Masterpiece Theater.'' Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson do the Bard as his liveliest. Also look for Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves in the cast. Reeves' box-office smash, ``Speed,'' arrives on HBO this month. It's even livelier than ``Much Ado About Nothing.''. . . To observe the 66th anniversary of Audrey Hepburn's birth, American Movie Classics on Saturday presents a Hepburn film festival and fund-raiser for the late star's children's fund. Yes, ``Breakfast at Tiffany's'' is included.
Here's a classic network time-waster: ``Will You Marry Me? Part 3'' on ABC Sunday at 8 p.m. Suzanne Somers and Dick Clark show people getting engaged in ballparks and at fire stations. Who cares? In contrast, the ABC special ``Who Makes You Laugh?'' scheduled for Saturday at 10 p.m. is worth viewing if for nothing else than to see vintage Nichols and May, Monty Python and George Carlin. . . . The ``Lovejoy Mysteries'' start a new season on A&E Monday night at 10 with Lovejoy (Ian McShane) in trouble for passing a bad check. The man is such a rogue. . . . Here comes another of those country music love-fests. The ``Academy of Country Music Awards'' special airs on NBC Wednesday night at 8 with Clint Black, Tanya Tucker and Jeff Foxworthy hosting the three-hour telecast. The entertainer of the year is either Alabama, Garth Brooks, Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson or Reba McEntire. . . . The ``Broadway on Bravo'' series continues Saturday with ``Pippin'' at 7 p.m. The late Martha Raye is included in the cast re-creating Bob Fosse's musical smash. . . . Oh, boy. Championship ballroom dancing pops up on WHRO Wednesday night at 8:30.
Nicollette Sheridan is miscast as a doctor at the Center for Disease Control on the trail of a deadly virus in ``Robin Cook's Virus'' on NBC Monday night at 9. (No, it's not the Dustin Hoffman flick currently in movie theaters.) Believe her in this role lifted from a Robin Cook novel and you'll believe one of Charlie's Angels as a scrub nurse on ``ER.''. . . Let's stop taking the office copying machine for granted. Show it a little respect. Watch ``The Secret Life of Machines: Photocopier'' on The Learning Channel Wednesday night at 9:30. Is your toner low?. . . The compulsively cute Crystal Bernard of ``Wings'' moonlights on the USA network Wednesday at 10 p.m. as a Texan in Los Angeles caught in a murder for profit scam. Judge Reinhold co-stars in the made for TV flick, ``As Good as Dead.'' On ``Wings,'' she marries Joe come May 23. . . . Another TV marriage during sweeps: Martin Lawrence, who in real life wed Pat Southall in Norfolk last winter, takes Gina for his bride on ``Martin'' Thursday night on Fox at 8. . . . Rosie O'Donnell, who used her stand-up comic routine as a springboard to roles on Broadway and in feature films, returns to the land of one-liners on Home Box Office Monday night at 11:45. In a concert taped in Boston, she tells the secret of getting close to Madonna, her co-star in ``A League of Their Own.'' . . . With Mother's Day almost here, The Nashville Network offers ``Path to Stardom: Mother Knows Best'' on Saturday at 10 p.m. Naomi Judd, who will be put up for sainthood in a made-for-TV film on NBC next Sunday, talks about the trials of raising two headstrong daughters without a father to help. . . . Live from Namibia, it's the Miss Universe Pageant on CBS Friday at 8 p.m. Hey, doesn't the Nile run through Namibia? Or is that Nubia? ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
George Wendt...Peter Falk...
Photo
Betty Grable...
by CNB