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The Rogues is probably television's most awaited new series, since it stars Charles Boyer, David Niven, Gig Young, Gladys Cooper and Robert Coote, a cast that would bestir Broadway. They are an international family of aristocratic robbing hoods, who steal from rich raff and usually give to the deserving. Unfortunately, they do not all appear all the time. Niven starred in the opener, supported by Coote and Guest Star Dina Merrill, who was having a big week in one-shot appearances. Even though she went swimming nude in the Mediterranean and nearly married a Greek shipping magnate, Dina looked preoccupied, as if she were wondering how she was going to seduce Mickey Rooney on Wednesday night. Niven, posing as an Australian financier in his effort to fleece the shipping magnate, seemed to be looking around desperately for Alfred Hitchcock, of whose style The Rogues is an awkward imitation. Traveling by everything from yacht to donkey cart against Riviera backgrounds, The Rogues was all ashuffle with impossible predicaments, lightning solutions and fantastic coincidences. Everywhere they went, in fact, its characters kept running into one another as if they were actors on an overcrowded television set.
Flipper stars a 300-lb. Florida porpoise, a kind of Rin Tin Tuna, who saves the day when the people in the story seem doomed. Last week a skin-diver with a rare blood type was chewed by a shark. A container of the rare blood soon arrived by helicopter, but was accidentally dropped into 50 fathoms of water. Flipper flipped to retrieve it. Hi-ho, Flipper! But did the audience flip too? Not flipping likely.
The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo features the world's most unlikely casting. Tired of the nearsighted rut he was in, the animated Mr. Magoo has opted to play roles from the classics —Don Quixote, the Count of Monte Cristo, Captain Ahab, D'Artagnan, Ulysses, Merlin, Paul Revere. You name it; Magoo is it. And he is not kidding. He is not playing for farce at all. The tales are told straightforwardly, and predictably they will be excellent fare for children. Magoo started his series as William Tell. Looking less nearsighted than blind, he lifted his crossbow, sighted the apple on his son's head, and let 'er fly. The apple split into matching hemispheres. And what was that second arrow for, pray, Tell? Perhaps for the first person to laugh.
Another actor, this one real, who has broken away this season from his stereotyped past is Dennis Weaver. After limping through ten years of Gunsmoke as Mr. Dillon's deputy Chester, Weaver is now walking alone and normally as Kentucky Jones. Trainer of race horses, he is also a widower with a nine-year-old Chinese boy to raise (this is the Year of the Tiger for Chinese TV actors). The little boy, called Dwight Eisenhower Wong, is an escapee from the Chinese mainland, and he has brought with him both ageless philosophy and ancient cuisine. Seeing Weaver in a hung-over condition last week, he warned him: "Lover of wine is cousin of goose." Perhaps as an antidote, he thereafter gave him a steaming pot of powdered horse-manure tea.
The second installment of the season's new TV series will arrive next week—one more from ABC, two from NBC, and twelve from CBS. NBC is holding two others for later premières, including Profiles in Courage.