Princely Palaces, Animal Houses

By Gerald Clarke, Frank Rich

Two new series feature a royal wastrel and a campus clown

Edward the King (Wednesdays, 8 p.m.). This year, as in the several preceding, the best shows on American television will probably have British accents. Upstairs, Downstairs has already returned, to loud hosannas. I, Claudius will be back in June, and The Duchess of Duke Street will carry on with new adventures next fall. This week what could be called the Mobil Network--a grouping of stations put together by the big oil company--will launch one of the most engrossing series of all, a 13-part program based on the life of Edward VII.

CBS bought the series from Britain's ITC Entertainment in 1974, at a cost of $2.5 million. But it stayed in the vaults for almost four years while programming executives came and went, uncertain what to do with such a big and elegantly wrapped package. Eventually the network decided, remarkably enough, that it was not sufficiently American and sold it for $1.8 million to Mobil, which will now show it on 49 stations throughout the country.

The history of CBS's flirtation with Edward is important only because it shows, once again, the creative impoverishment of the commercial networks, which are both intrigued and frightened by high-quality programs that cannot be tossed off for quick prestige. Slow in starting, like most of the other British imports, Edward gains power with each episode, and instead of falling off, as some series do, it becomes more absorbing with each hour.

The series begins a few months before Edward's birth in 1841 and finishes with his death in 1910. Queen Victoria, played to near perfection by Annette Crosbie, changes from a willful girl to an arrogant and inflexible old woman. With out altering the known facts, Crosbie manages to give depth to what must have been a rather dull, two-dimensional woman and even succeeds in making her likable. Prince Albert (Robert Hardy) is the one person Victoria seems to love. When he dies of typhoid, young Edward is accused of having worried him to death with his youthful womanizing and exuberant ways.

For the next 40 years, until she dies in 1901, Victoria refuses to let Edward, who is portrayed in his maturity by Timothy West, learn the craft of statesmanship or take on any of the duties that normally fall to the Prince of Wales. Edward becomes a public wastrel, negligent of both his beautiful Danish wife (portrayed in her later years by Helen Ryan) and his role as future King. Only when the old Queen dies does he come into his own, vowing to wear the crown with dignity, which indeed he does. Like Crosbie, West gives a finely tuned and modulated performance, making altogether believable that most difficult of roles, the errant prince who turns out to be a virtuous King.

Indeed, the only wrong note was struck in the U.S., where Robert MacNeil was hired to introduce each hour, the duty performed by Alistair Cooke on Masterpiece Theater. Only after seeing MacNeil, who fidgets through his banalities, does one realize how artful Cooke's introductions are.

Delta House (Jan. 18, ABC, 8:30 p.m. E.S.T.). In a typical display of initiative and daring, all three networks have sched uled fraternity-house sitcoms for 1979. Two of the entries, CBS's Co-ed Fever and NBC's Brothers and Sisters, are rip-offs of National Lampoon 's Animal House; ABC's Delta House is a spinoff. In the competitive circus of TV, where arcane distinctions mean everything, the ABC show has the decided edge. Delta House may not quite be Animal House, but at least it is the one genuine forgery.

The setting is again Faber College, circa 1962, and many of the characters from the hit movie are back. Though a few of the film's supporting players (John Vernon, Stephen Furst) have hitched up with the TV show, most of the roles have been recast. Realizing that John Belushi's maniacal Bluto is irreplaceable, the series' creators have wisely retired him from action. In Delta House, Bluto has fled Faber forever, to be succeeded by a younger brother known as Blotto. Josh Mostel, who plays the sibling, shares Belushi's girth but is otherwise attempting to create an "animal" of a different stripe. Where Bluto guzzled beer, Blotto guzzles beer bottles.

Delta House's first episode, written by the Lampoon veterans who created the movie, is always amusing. Alas, the original's gleeful sexual reveries cannot be duplicated on TV, but the antiauthoritarian tone is intact. There are even gags about Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Arnold Toynbee, thus placing Delta House roughly two intellectual cuts above CBS's pompous The Paper Chase. Let the viewer beware, however, for future episodes will be written by different hands. Should ABC fail to exercise strong quality control, this promising spin-off could quickly go into a tailspin.

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