Crime Pays in Prime Time

By Richard Zoglin

Guns and glitz highlight a play-it-safe season

Doctors and lawyers come and go, sitcoms have hit the skids, and one day even Joan Collins may be just another question in Trivial Pursuit. But in the world of TV programming, crime nearly always pays. That axiom seems to be the watchword as the networks prepare to unveil their new shows for the coming season. At a time when cable and home-video recorders are luring more and more viewers away from traditional network fare, the Big Three are responding by playing it safe -and nothing is safer than cops-and-robbers. Eight of the 22 new series airing this fall focus on crime fighters of one sort or another, from hard-boiled police detectives to jet-setting private eyes. With 15 shows of the same ilk returning from last season, murderers will be nabbed, drug rings busted and cars sent tumbling over cliffs on more than a third of all the prime-time hours this season.

Copying proven hits is, of course, nothing new for TV. But in past years the networks at least looked for other media bandwagons to jump on. A few seasons back, clones of Animal House were in fashion; another year, rip-offs of Raiders of the Lost Ark were the rage. This year, however, the networks have scarcely looked beyond their own backyard for inspiration. Along with the crime fighters, there will be the requisite batch of sitcoms, more romantic fluff from the Aaron Spelling factory, another in the parade of blooper shows (ABC's People Do the Craziest Things) and a weekly version of a hit NBC mini-series from last season, V. The only discernible outside influence is the rock-on-film trend, sparked by Fame, Flashdance and MTV. They have inspired one new series, CBS's Dreams, and thumping rock sound tracks on several others.

Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. The new season has received an early boost from an unlikely summer hit. Helped by massive promotion during the Olympics, ABC's Call to Glory, an earnest drama about an Air Force family in the early 1960s starring Craig T. Nelson, drew good enough ratings after its mid-August premiere to land a spot on the fall schedule. Its patriotic appeal has won the approval of President Reagan, but the show appears to have more complex ambitions: on one recent episode, the family got involved in a local battle over racial discrimination. Call to Glory deserves praise for at least one solid achievement. It has supplanted yet another cop show on ABC's fall schedule: Street Hawk, starring a superpowered motorcycle.

When Street Hawk does show up later this season, it will join several airy action shows modeled on such hits as Magnum, P.I., Simon & Simon, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. These prototypes have imparted some valuable lessons for the fall:

Crime Fighting Can Be Fun. TV's glum professionals, from Sergeant Joe Friday to Lieut. Kojak, have given way to a new breed of lighthearted crime fighters, very '80s guys and gals who read the riot act with tongue firmly in cheek. The wisecracks are often tossed back and forth between a pair of mismatched partners, but these folks can laugh in the face of death too. (A cop on ABC's new Hawaiian Heat says to his buddy, who has just been lowered by helicopter to save his life: "Nice of you to drop in.")

Never Trust the System. Despite a conservative, law-and-order frame of mind, TV's new crime fighters are profoundly skeptical of the law-enforcement establishment. Virtually every series hero is either a private detective or a fiercely independent cop at odds with his or her by-the-book boss. In NBC'S Hot Pursuit, a law-abiding married couple are even forced to go on the lam, Fugitive-style, to solve the murder for which she has been wrongly convicted.

Cars Can Fly. This year, as in the past, few TV hours will go by without a highspeed auto chase involving vehicles with the uncanny ability to defy gravity in picturesque slow motion.

As adherents to the formula go, NBC'S Hunter is probably the most entertaining of the newcomers. Former N.F.L. Defensive End Fred Dryer stars as a Clint Eastwood-style police detective who is teamed up with an equally independent female cop (Stepfanie Kramer). Producer Stephen Cannell (The A-Team ) knows how to poke fun at the genre without trashing it: after a high-speed car chase, a culprit drags himself, half dead, from under his demolished auto. Crouched in front of the malefactor, Dryer deadpans, "Stop or I'll shoot."

ABC'S Jessie, starring Lindsay Wagner as a police psychiatrist, wants to be taken more seriously. But in the original pilot, she helped track down a murderer-rapist with such amazing clairvoyance that even ABC was incredulous: the network fired the producers and hired crime-show veteran David Gerber (Police Story) to make the show more plausible. With Wagner, TV's former Bionic Woman, spouting unctuous psychobabble, that will be no mean feat.

For civilized crime fighting, Angela Lansbury is delightful as a mystery writer who solves whodunits in her spare time in Murder, She Wrote (CBS). And for a walk on the wilder side of law enforcement, NBC is offering Miami Vice. Shot in a gritty, cinema-verite style, the show has a good deal of hard-edged vitality. Still, one cop keeps a pet alligator for laughs and gets predictably surly when he is teamed with a transplanted New York City detective: "This is Miami, pal... and down here you're just another amateur!" Yeah, and Miami Vice is just another cop show.

If Miami Vice offers the grit, plenty of others will provide the glamour. Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter decorate a San Francisco detective agency in Partners in Crime (NBC). The gaudiest bauble on the fall schedule is ABC'S Paper Dolls, a soap opera set in the New York City fashion world, with Morgan Fairchild doing a Joan Collins impression as the head of a modeling agency. The show resurrects almost all the show-business cliches (the "star" model spoiled by success, the naive newcomer, the demanding stage mother) and stirs them up for a season of soapsuds that will probably be mistaken for entertainment by a large audience. But Paper Dolls looks like Thomas Mann next to the inanities of Glitter, a Spelling comedy-drama set in the offices of a PEOPLE-like national magazine. If possible, the show seems even more retrograde than its prototype, Spelling's The Love Boat.

Spelling's more successful creation this season is Finder of Lost Loves (ABC), starring Tony Franciosa as the head of a detective agency that tracks down old flames for heartsick lovers. In its jaded way, this show may have come up with the perfect recipe for TV success: detective-show intrigue, the wishes-can-come-true appeal of Fantasy Island, a paternalistic and caring professional and a nonstop spate of romantic reunions. Watch it, enjoy it, and hate yourself in the morning.

Viewers looking for a revival of the situation comedy this season will be disappointed. Precocious children have multiplied at a frightening rate. Who's the Boss? (ABC) stars Tony Danza as a live-in housekeeper for a divorcee and her young son; Charles in Charge (CBS) features Scott Baio as a college student who rooms with a family of five. Viewers who can tell them apart may move on to It's Your Move (NBC), with Jason Bateman as a teen-age cross between Dennis the Menace and Sergeant Bilko. And in Punky Brewster (NBC), an insufferably cute seven-year-old (Soleil Moon Frye) moves in with a crusty old photographer (George Gaynes). In an era when TV comedy is being geared to younger and younger audiences, this may be the first show to qualify as a crib toy.

The best of the comedy crop may turn out to be NBC's The Cosby Show, starring Bill Cosby as an obstetrician with a lawyer wife and four children. The veteran comic brings his relaxed charm to the familiar domestic problems. And if the tots do not exactly qualify as realistic, they at least seem to inhabit this solar system. Meanwhile, Elliott Gould has been hoodwinked into a misconceived comedy called E/R (CBS), set in a wacky hospital emergency ward. Gould's anarchic persona has been straitjacketed with tired gag lines, and the show's attempt to mix laughs with medical traumas is gratingly out of kilter.

In this sea of sameness, little deviations from the norm start to look like monumental achievements. One such pleasure is Dreams. Make no mistake: this half-hour "comedy with music" about a struggling rock band in Philadelphia is TV's effort to grab the Flashdance crowd. But it has an envigorating, big-city ambience, the dialogue is hipper than usual, and the young performers are appealing, especially Valerie Stevenson as a rich girl who sings her way into the band.

Another enjoyable diversion comes from Michael Landon, who has transferred his homespun morality tales from Little House on the Prairie to a modern setting in Highway to Heaven (NBC). Landon, who is both executive producer and star, portrays an angel who travels around doing good deeds while spouting homilies about old-fashioned values. "Who's your boss?" demands a cynical ex-policeman (VictorFrench). "God," Landon replies with disarming candor. Anyone who can say that with a straight face in prime time must be guided by more than the Nielsen ratings. Highway to Heaven has the ring of sincerity, a rare and refreshing thing on TV. Besides, the ex-policeman becomes Landon's human sidekick, and he is the only cop this season who drives under the speed limit.