Short Takes

TELEVISION

Prime-Time Gunslinging

AS JEFF GREENFIELD POINTED OUT IN AN amusing piece on Sunday's debut of DAY ONE, new TV shows often founder by experimenting too boldly (see 20/20 and PrimeTime Live). Perhaps with that in mind, the first episode of ABC's new magazine show emphasized old-fashioned, straight-ahead journalism. Most of the program was devoted to host Forrest Sawyer's report on a Portland, Oregon, man convicted of attempted murder for sleeping with his next-door neighbor when he knew he had AIDS. It was engrossing in the familiar 60 Minutes manner: dramatic storytelling, a clear-cut bad guy and a gunslinging reporter. Unfortunately, Sawyer's cool intelligence often comes across as smugness, and it remains to be seen whether he can make Day One go the distance.

MUSIC

Keep Your Day Job

EDDIE MURPHY HAS A WOODY ALLEN problem: he wants to branch out from comedy but the public won't let him. Then again, there are worse Woody Allen problems he could have. Murphy's new R.-and-B. album, LOVE'S ALRIGHT (Motown), was obviously a huge effort, a labor of love, jam-packed with more guest stars than The Player and the Home Shopping Network combined. On the best track, Yeah, there are performance cameos by Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and others. Unfortunately, this hammers home the point that Murphy the musical artist is no Jackson, McCartney or Wonder. With this album Murphy proves he's a good songwriter and vocalist. Trouble is, he's a great comedian.

MUSIC

Idiot's Delight

THE TITLE OF ALFRED SCHNITTKE'S LIFE WITH AN IDIOT (Sony Classical) evokes a world of Russian literature -- Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Pushkin -- but the real impetus for this new opera by Russia's finest living composer is a powerful short story by the former underground author Victor Erofeyev. Any political resonance in the tale of an idiot named Vova (Lenin's nickname), who moves in with a hapless couple and destroys their lives, is, of course, purely intentional. Schnittke limns the moral and social breakdown of "I" and his "Wife" in a score of terrifying, eclectic intensity. The first-rate performance, recorded live at the premiere last year in Amsterdam, is led by Mstislav Rostropovich -- in his element, as always, in the music of his homeland.

BOOKS

Making Faces at The Mirror

HERE'S A SPLASHY, SWAGGERING CRIME novel with a lot of what would be chest hair and gold chains if it were a human male instead of a book. But Robert Ferrigno's THE CHESHIRE MOON (Morrow; $20) is just mirror tough; it sneaks a glance at itself too often, likes what it sees too much. Quinn, the hero, is supposed to be a stressed-out investigative reporter; and since this is Los Angeles, he's got a bigfoot Jeep with a camo paint job (there's a plot, but first things first) and a drop-dead Japanese-American photog girlfriend who wears cowboy boots with little chains on them. The bad guys include an old- time movie cowboy with a political itch and an aging football hero who < likes to hurt people. Their meanness is actorish.

THEATER

Hitting a Peak

No American playwright uses factual material more imaginatively than Lee Blessing, whether speculating about arms-control negotiations in the witty A Walk in the Woods or ruminating on how the national pastime embodies our darkest heritage in the antiheroic biography Cobb. He hits a new peak in TWO ROOMS, a depiction of a Beirut hostage and his grieving wife that merges harrowing narrative with elegantly poetic, and redemptive, visual and verbal imagery. A brilliant, too-brief off-Broadway staging by James Houghton, starring Jeffrey Hayenga and the unforgettable Laura Esterman, has just closed. The play deserves further productions around the country.