Guns and glitz highlight a play-it-safe season
Doctors and lawyers come and go, sitcoms have hit the skids, and one day even Joan Collins may be just another question in Trivial Pursuit. But in the world of TV programming, crime nearly always pays. That axiom seems to be the watchword as the networks prepare to unveil their new shows for the coming season. At a time when cable and home-video recorders are luring more and more viewers away from traditional network fare, the Big Three are responding by playing it safe−and nothing is safer than cops-and-robbers. Eight of the 22 new series airing this fall focus on crime fighters of one sort or another, from hard-boiled police detectives to jet-setting private eyes. With 15 shows of the same ilk returning from last season, murderers will be nabbed, drug rings busted and cars sent tumbling over cliffs on more than a third of all the prime-time hours this season.
Copying proven hits is, of course, nothing new for TV. But in past years the networks at least looked for other media bandwagons to jump on. A few seasons back, clones of Animal House were in fashion; another year, rip-offs of Raiders of the Lost Ark were the rage. This year, however, the networks have scarcely looked beyond their own backyard for inspiration. Along with the crime fighters, there will be the requisite batch of sitcoms, more romantic fluff from the Aaron Spelling factory, another in the parade of blooper shows (ABC's People Do the Craziest Things) and a weekly version of a hit NBC mini-series from last season, V. The only discernible outside influence is the rock-on-film trend, sparked by Fame, Flashdance and MTV. They have inspired one new series, CBS's Dreams, and thumping rock sound tracks on several others.
Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. The new season has received an early boost from an unlikely summer hit. Helped by massive promotion during the Olympics, ABC's Call to Glory, an earnest drama about an Air Force family in the early 1960s starring Craig T. Nelson, drew good enough ratings after its mid-August premiere to land a spot on the fall schedule. Its patriotic appeal has won the approval of President Reagan, but the show appears to have more complex ambitions: on one recent episode, the family got involved in a local battle over racial discrimination. Call to Glory deserves praise for at least one solid achievement. It has supplanted yet another cop show on ABC's fall schedule: Street Hawk, starring a superpowered motorcycle.
When Street Hawk does show up later this season, it will join several airy action shows modeled on such hits as Magnum, P.I., Simon & Simon, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. These prototypes have imparted some valuable lessons for the fall:
Crime Fighting Can Be Fun. TV's glum professionals, from Sergeant Joe Friday to Lieut. Kojak, have given way to a new breed of lighthearted crime fighters, very '80s guys and gals who read the riot act with tongue firmly in cheek. The wisecracks are often tossed back and forth between a pair of mismatched partners, but these folks can laugh in the face of death too. (A cop on ABC's new Hawaiian Heat says to his buddy, who has just been lowered by helicopter to save his life: "Nice of you to drop in.")