No. 3, and Trying Harder

By Richard Burgheim

TV wags have an easy way out of the Viet Nam War: Put it on ABC and it will be canceled in 13 weeks. As a rule, TV series do tend to suffer a higher mortality rate on ABC than on NBC or CBS. The corollary of the rule is that ABC, the perennial No. 3 of the networks, tries a lot harder to be newer than the competition. That was borne out again last week, as ABC became the last of the three to throw the switch on its new prime-time season.

For 1970-71, No. 3 introduced twelve new shows, more than NBC and CBS combined. To ABC's credit, three of the twelve were rather promising situation comedies--a genre in which television usually confects nothing but embarrassments. Two of ABC's new entries are adaptations of stage and film hits by Playwright Neil Simon. The Odd Couple is the one about the two men who split from their wives, share an apartment and unwittingly caricature their own fallibility as spouses. ABC was shrewd enough to cast Jack Klugman, the only possible substitute for Walter Matthau, as the slovenly sportswriter. This time around, his fastidious roommate is played by Tony Randall who, if not up to Broadway Predecessor Art Carney, is apter than Hollywood's Jack Lemmon. Pray for Simon's babies.

Paramount Pop. Barefoot in the Park--the Simon farce about newlyweds in the Manhattan walk-up with the leaky skylight and squeaky mother-in-law--has been transmogrified by Paramount into all-blackness. The premiere was predictable yet sprightly, as the hero (Scoey Mitchlll), a token Negro in a fashionable law firm, was cajoled into moonlighting as a butler at a party, where, naturally, his boss showed up. Offscreen, Scoey has beaten the 13-week jinx in his own way. After hassling all summer, Mitchlll popped a Paramount vice president in the face with just twelve shows finished. As of last week, Scoey's replacement was unchosen.

Shirley Jones is yet another sitcom widow in discreet heat in The Partridge Family, the saga of a Cowsills-like pop sextet. The show is carried by Danny Bonaduce, who has the showbiz cunning and Manhattan mouth of a David Merrick--in the body of a freckled, redheaded ten-year-old. Clap-Trapp though it was, the Partridge premiere never got as icky as another show-biz-set sitcom, the late (1953-65) Danny Thomas Show, which has now been exhumed as Make Room for Grandaddy. The same old cast is back, but in TV's Age of Relevance, it is over its empty head tackling timely topics like the Pill and racial prejudice.

Three other old ABC headliners returned inauspiciously in action series. Burt Reynolds (Hawk) is back as Dan August, a nondescript homicide detective. Christopher George (Rat Patrol) is resurrected as The Immortal, a racing driver whose blood antibodies "make him immune to all diseases, including the aging process." Like The Fugitive before him, he is on the run--in this case doomed to spend the whole cliche-choked series fleeing an aging and baleful billionaire (David Brian) who wants to siphon off a few pints.

Vince Edwards, the saturnine neurosurgeon of Ben Casey, turns up as Matt Lincoln, whose ABC press-department shingle reads "Now" Psychiatrist. The mod touch is that he is in shirtsleeves instead of an unbuttoned doctor's tunic, and runs a hot-line service dispensing 5-c- psychotherapy to troubled teenagers. The squad touch is provided by a youthful quartet of apprentice shrinks, who could spin off their own series as, perhaps, The Id Kids.

Mon Dieu! The Young Rebels is ABC's most cynical new show. Seems, according to Screen Gems historians, that a three-member guerrilla cadre of kids operating behind Redcoat lines practically won the American Revolution by themselves. An apparent Tory wastrel (Rick Ely) is the leader, but the grand military strategist and inventor of their Rube Goldberg-like weaponry is a rotund genius (Alex Henteloff), who curiously resembles Ben Franklin. A freed slave (Lou Gosset) forges the inventions into working hardware. Also bivouacking with them periodically are a brunette camp follower (Elizabeth Coates) and the Marquis de Lafayette (Philippe Forquet), no less. When the Marquis is briefed on the group's exploits, he exclaims: "Mon Dieu" Exactement.

The Young Lawyers are just like CBS's legal-aid team of The Storefront Lawyers, except that they are at least half interesting. The premiere, about a malpractice suit against a hippie-style doctor, was somewhat implausible and melodramatic but it did introduce a highly engaging cast, headed by Lee J. Cobb as mentor and Zalman King as his zealous star pupil. ABC offers two other multi-hero series. The Silent Force is an old formula show, of equal parts Gangbusters and Mission: Impossible. The weekly assignment is "to cut one more tentacle from the octopus of organized crime." The Most Deadly Game, which will not premiere until next week, pits a trio of master criminologists (George Maharis, Yvette Mimieux and Ralph Bellamy) against supposedly unsolvable "crimes of passion."

Brand Switchers. ABC's big ratings ploy of the fall is N.F.L. Monday Night Football. The inaugural play-by-play commentary was sloppier and more pedantic than CBS's or NBC's, but ex-Quarterback Don Meredith proved a knowing and folksy second-guesser. To provide more details, ABC used nine cameras (instead of the normal six) to follow key defensive moves or blocks on the line. One other welcome flourish: at half time, ABC eschews marching bands and baton twirlers to rerun the highlights of the pro games the day before.

The prime-time football and other changes lead some TV ratings gurus to predict that ABC, which reduced the Nielsen numbers gap about 4% last year, will make equal headway this season and approach parity with CBS and NBC, now in a virtual tie for first place. At least ABC could match or surpass CBS among the 18-to-49-year-old "young adults," whom Madison Avenue covets as the brand switchers and heaviest consumers. That progress, if realized, would enable ABC to run its series longer instead of being pressed to rush in a dozen replacements every fall.

. Richard Burgheim

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