From Beautiful Downtown Nowhere

Weird electronic music. A psychedelic title card. And then, the opening scene of ABC's new "second season" show, Turn-On. Two computer operators, one white and one black, sit with their backs to the camera facing a madly flashing IBM 360, or something. Says black to white, "I've never programmed a program before." He must be the only second-season TV man in Hollywood who hasn't. By last week, eight midseason replacement shows had made their debuts, and they all looked like print-outs from a stuck computer.

Turn-On itself, produced by the originators of Laugh-In, looked like a half-hour reject from the Rowan and Martin memory bank. The host was neither Dan nor Dick but a computer, for the show was supposed to be "a satire on our dehumanized society." It was also intended as a "sensory assault," careening along, sometimes with the screen split four ways, reaching for a dizzying 300 laughs in a half hour. To add to the disorientation, the set was a white plaster cyclorama and the cast wore invisible white booties. It all seemed to come from beautiful downtown nowhere. So did the gags, leaning largely on contraception and homosexuality. In response to critics' and affiliates' protest, the network cancelled this week's episode and called a weekend meeting "to determine the future of Turn-On."

Coming in on lighter, unbootied feet was What's It All About, World? (ABC). From the same shop that created the Smothers Brothers show, the series was billed as a "sometimes biting" satirica revue. "We plan to kick the door wide open," the producers promised. TherE they closed it by hiring as host Disney Star Dean Jones (That Darn Cat), and by laying on a premiere as topical as Early Berle, as substantial as tapioca. They struck body blows at Shirley Tern ple movies and George M. Cohan musicals. A chorus boy wore a huge papier-mache Richard Nixon head. Mid-finale, Jones apologized "if we've offended anybody," and the cast broke into This Land Is My Land. The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (CBS) is a revival of the summer-substitute show starring Citybilly Singei Campbell (TIME, Jan. 31). Comic Pal Paulsen usually pops in, and the result is pleasantly unobjectionable. Particularly refreshing is the lack of overproduction numbers and the lighting psychedelia now in vogue. The same could not be said of This Is Tom Jones (ABC), a variety bill headlined by a Welsh baritone in the soul bag. Jones version of soul is three parts sweat and a half-part swivet. On the premiere, he was finished off by his continuity writers, lusterless Songstress Joey Heatherton, and Comic Richard Pryor, whose contribution was a tasteless impression of a Negro preacher. Even more painful is The Queen and I (CBS), a situation comedy whose plot is Bilko at sea. Very much at sea-- the Queen being an ocean liner headed for mothballs. Keeping it afloat is a moronic purser (Larry Storch), whose schemes, like catering bar mitzvahs in port, are always being thwarted by the prissy first officer (Billy De Wolfe). The boat is shipshape; the gags are strictly for the scrapyard. Sheldon Leonard, a producer with, as they say, a good track record (The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy), has brought in a very usual and savorless crime series called My Friend Tony (NBC). He may have undone himself in attempting to reduce the violence. The hero is a stodgy professor of criminology (James Whitmore); his inevitable sidekick, Tony (Enzo Cerusico), is a cross between Kookie of 77 Sunset Strip and Chester of Gunsmoke. He doesn't limp like Chester; he just trips a lot over his Italian accent. The remaining replacement series are game shows. The Generation Gap from David Susskind's Talent Associates, pits a team of three teen-agers against a trio of adults. The kids, it turned out, could not identify Eddie Cantor or the FCC. The fogeys didn't know an "axe" (a guitar) from a hole in the ground. Mostly the show just proved that people who appear on such programs have an intelligence gap. Finally, ABC is adding a prime-time version of Let's Make a Deal, the afternoon show in which hysterical housewives bid against each other for what may be a pig (or a silk purse) in a poke. This year's second season has already played the game, and lost.

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