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Spelling's more successful creation this season is Finder of Lost Loves (ABC), starring Tony Franciosa as the head of a detective agency that tracks down old flames for heartsick lovers. In its jaded way, this show may have come up with the perfect recipe for TV success: detective-show intrigue, the wishes-can-come-true appeal of Fantasy Island, a paternalistic and caring professional and a nonstop spate of romantic reunions. Watch it, enjoy it, and hate yourself in the morning.
Viewers looking for a revival of the situation comedy this season will be disappointed. Precocious children have multiplied at a frightening rate. Who's the Boss? (ABC) stars Tony Danza as a live-in housekeeper for a divorcee and her young son; Charles in Charge (CBS) features Scott Baio as a college student who rooms with a family of five. Viewers who can tell them apart may move on to It's Your Move (NBC), with Jason Bateman as a teen-age cross between Dennis the Menace and Sergeant Bilko. And in Punky Brewster (NBC), an insufferably cute seven-year-old (Soleil Moon Frye) moves in with a crusty old photographer (George Gaynes). In an era when TV comedy is being geared to younger and younger audiences, this may be the first show to qualify as a crib toy.
The best of the comedy crop may turn out to be NBC's The Cosby Show, starring Bill Cosby as an obstetrician with a lawyer wife and four children. The veteran comic brings his relaxed charm to the familiar domestic problems. And if the tots do not exactly qualify as realistic, they at least seem to inhabit this solar system. Meanwhile, Elliott Gould has been hoodwinked into a misconceived comedy called E/R (CBS), set in a wacky hospital emergency ward. Gould's anarchic persona has been straitjacketed with tired gag lines, and the show's attempt to mix laughs with medical traumas is gratingly out of kilter.
In this sea of sameness, little deviations from the norm start to look like monumental achievements. One such pleasure is Dreams. Make no mistake: this half-hour "comedy with music" about a struggling rock band in Philadelphia is TV's effort to grab the Flashdance crowd. But it has an envigorating, big-city ambience, the dialogue is hipper than usual, and the young performers are appealing, especially Valerie Stevenson as a rich girl who sings her way into the band.
Another enjoyable diversion comes from Michael Landon, who has transferred his homespun morality tales from Little House on the Prairie to a modern setting in Highway to Heaven (NBC). Landon, who is both executive producer and star, portrays an angel who travels around doing good deeds while spouting homilies about old-fashioned values. "Who's your boss?" demands a cynical ex-policeman (VictorFrench). "God," Landon replies with disarming candor. Anyone who can say that with a straight face in prime time must be guided by more than the Nielsen ratings. Highway to Heaven has the ring of sincerity, a rare and refreshing thing on TV. Besides, the ex-policeman becomes Landon's human sidekick, and he is the only cop this season who drives under the speed limit.