(2 of 5)
If only the minds at Dreamworks had thought to develop a sitcom around Duran Duran, TV's cannibalization of the 1980s would be complete. As it stands, more than a dozen faces familiar from the age of panty-hose-with-Reeboks will be starring in the season's new comedies and dramas. Former teen icons Molly Ringwald and Brooke Shields both have their own single-gal sitcoms (Townies on ABC and Suddenly Susan on NBC, respectively). Meanwhile Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad will be renewing their fictional marriage in CBS's Cosby. Also returning to TV comedy with hopes of another big hit: Family Ties' Michael J. Fox, pop culture's perkiest avatar of the greed years. As the star of ABC's Spin City, Fox plays a deputy mayor who surely isn't making the six figures Alex Keaton would have hoped for. And expect to see thirtysomething's famed yuppies, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Steadman, doing a lot less brooding. The CBS drama EZ Streets features Ken Olin as a non-Volvo-driving cop, while the NBC sitcom Something So Right has Mel Harris as a party planner unlikely to wear a spit-up-stained Princeton sweatshirt.
JASPER JOHNS' GRAND OLD RETROSPECTIVE
With a presidential campaign in full swing, the American flag may be the most pervasive symbol of the season. As a work of graphic design, it may also be the most taken for granted. This wasn't so back in the 1950s when Jasper Johns altered the course of American painting--Abstract Expressionism had been king-- with a series of bright, bold pictures of flags as well as targets and numerals. The works were blunt and direct, with no emotional charge. Johns never got into Pop, but those artists borrowed from him, as did Conceptualists and Minimalists. From Oct. 20 to Jan. 21, New York's Museum of Modern Art will present a retrospective of this idiosyncratic master.
MUSICAL THEATER: BRING IN THE RINGERS
Rent may or may not have revolutionized the Broadway musical, but the form certainly is attracting some interesting playwrights. David Mamet is helping revamp the book for Randy Newman's Faust, which made its debut to much fanfare at California's La Jolla Playhouse last year and will resurface Sept. 30 at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. (Look for long, circular conversations between Faust and the devil.) Terrence McNally (Master Class) is tackling the book for Ragtime, a musical based on E.L. Doctorow's novel, which begins a pre-Broadway run in Toronto in December. And Britain's prolific Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular; Woman in Mind) wrote the book for and is directing a revamped version of By Jeeves, based on the P.G. Wodehouse character, at Connecticut's Goodspeed-at-Chester theater. The musical was a flop back in the 1970s, but its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, seems to have done all right. He's got a new musical too: Whistle Down the Wind, which opens in Washington in December and is due on Broadway next spring. No falling chandeliers--just some kids who find a stranger in the barn--but it will probably be a hit anyway.
POP MUSIC: SO WHAT DO THEY DO FOR AN ENCORE?
There is something fascinating--and sometimes a bit tragic--about the plight of successful first-time recording artists faced with cutting their second album. Splashy debuts behind them, they stand poised between maturation and one-hit wonderdom. So many don't pass the test there's even a phrase for the failure: sophomore slump.