(4 of 4)
The Yellow Rose (NBC, Saturdays, 10 p.m.). That old patriarch Wade Champion, he sired more boys than Ibn Saud put together: Roy (David Soul), who runs the Yellow Rose ranch; Quisto (Edward Albert), who wants to put oil derricks on the grazing land; and now Chance (Sam Elliott), fresh from a seven-year stretch for murder one. The women, too, can be hard as a Texas dirt road and twice as dangerous: Grace McKenzie (a sizzling Susan Anspach), the cook, serves up more than biscuits, and Colleen Champion (a restored Cybill Shepherd) looks ready to make trouble with every male on the show. The first episode gives hints of money wrangles and byzantine plot twists, but The Yellow Rose could be more than a prairiefied Dallas. NBC says the series is "in the tradition of Giant and Hud, "and it is. It is also in the Saturday-night graveyard slot, so it will have to corral an audience quickly. The Yellow Rose deserves a shot: this lowdown hoedown is the fall's juiciest new show. —By Richard Corliss