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MTM's The Tony Randall Show on ABC brings back The Odd Couple farceur in the role of a widowed judge in Philadelphia. The tired story line—the two motherless kids advising Dad on his sex life, an abrasive English housekeeper (played by the admirable Rachel Roberts)—is a tenuous handle for Randall.
THE BIONICS are multiplying like Texas Instruments' common stock. In addition to the Six Million Dollar Man and its automated rib-out, Bionic Woman, ABC has Holmes and Yoyo, featuring a robot programmed to do cops' work for kids' amusement. NBC recycles The Invisible Man as Gemini Man.
VARIETY COMEDY, that standard entry, will include the engaging Bill Cosby, with a comedy hour on ABC in prime kiddy time. He faces tough competition from the perennial Wonderful World of Disney (NBC) in the 7 p.m. Sunday slot, known in the trade as "death alley." The Captain and Tennille, a.k.a. Pop Musicians Daryl Dragon and Wife Toni Tennille, are a) lackluster, and b) up against Rhoda and Phyllis from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays, and may have to go bionic to survive. The same thing goes for Van Dyke and company on NBC, which is set for 10 p.m. on Thursdays.
SPECIALS, those traditional one-shot blockbusters, will feature Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope, Charlie Brown, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Bing Crosby and many others. This kind of show is virtually the property of NBC this year. The network has scheduled 190 hours of nonseries specials programming, plus 45 hours of a weekly spectacular it calls The Big Event. TBE is an amalgam of movies, novels-into-books and such nonhappenings as a 4½-hour special—during its worst rated year ever—in honor of NBC's own 50th anniversary. Highlights: the first network TV showing of Gone With the Wind in two parts (commercials were sold for $235,000 per minute) and a salute to cinema called LIFE Goes to the Movies. Despite its grandiose title and all-star goodies, TBE may have trouble developing a loyal audience. "With a title like that," says Frank Price, who heads Universal's TV division, "you need to have the Christians facing the lions. Nothing else will do."
FILMS are, of course, a diminishing species, and even fewer of them can be blue-penciled for TV. So, though all three networks carry on with movie nights (NBC has four, in addition to the superflicks on The Big Event), many of the films are made for TV. Among them: Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, based on the best-selling book about John F. Kennedy (NBC); and inevitably, Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby with Ruth Gordon (ABC).
ADVENTURE as a category looks upward. Two shows celebrate the wild blue yonder. Spencer's Pilots (CBS) records the adventures of two young pilots who work for an independent aviation company; against ABC's Donny and Marie and NBC's Sanford and Son, they may never get it off the ground. Baa Baa Black Sheep (NBC) expands the feats of scrappy Pappy Boyington, the celebrated World War II Marine Corps fighter pilot, in Dirty Dozen fashion.