Busy as she is strapping on those sandals, cocktailing to an imitation Bonnie Raitt and taking on clients who want to sue God, Ally McBeal probably doesn't have time to watch some of the new woman-themed TV programming that has arisen in her wake. And perhaps that's really best; for if she did have a look, Ally might see her dream of upmarket long-term love crumble like so much poorly packed wedding china. Indeed, what Ally would discover is that life with a good-looking professional and a Sub-Zero fridge doesn't add up to much, that happiness might be easier to come by if she returned to wherever she came from and made sure that Mom and Dad hadn't turned her girlhood room into an outpost for their StairMaster.
This lesson is delivered most pointedly in the new series Providence, which has become the TV season's unexpected hit and given NBC its highest ratings for a new drama since the unleashing of ER. Our heroine on Providence is a thirtysomething doctor who rids herself of her agent boyfriend and Malibu beach-house life to move home to the presumably less decadent shores of Rhode Island and work at a health clinic. Similarly, over on Lifetime, "the women's network," its three first-ever original programs--the drama Any Day Now and the comedies Maggie and Oh Baby--focus on women who renounce yuppie partnering fantasies for loftier pursuits. In fact, just like Providence, Any Day Now has as one of its protagonists a fortyish Washington refugee who gives up on power brokering and a noncommittal boyfriend to settle in her native town of Birmingham, Ala., and practice civil rights law.
Judging from the number of shoes on back order at Prada stores, it doesn't appear that real-life affluent women are doing all that much divesting. But here we have it anyway: a new, collective TV homage to lives of greater meaning and lower cell-phone bills. Perhaps CBS's soon-to-be-shelved sitcom Maggie Winters suffered because it didn't give its heroine a holier or more wholesome life-style alternative. Instead, it relocated a dumped Faith Ford from Chicago to her mother's house in Indiana for bonding and the occasional line dance.
All these programs seem born of an effort not only to create programming with a female point of view but also to attract women who may fall outside the demographic of single city girls age 25 and 26. This is a group perhaps too perkily and plentifully represented on late-'90s television in shows such as Ally McBeal, Suddenly Susan, Caroline in the City, Friends and so on. There's no doubt that Providence is reaching a broad audience. Since its Jan. 8 debut, and despite its generally doomed time slot (Fridays at 8 p.m. E.T.), Providence has been among the 15 highest-rated shows on network television, in some instances surpassing Ally McBeal, which draws more press than perhaps its ratings warrant. Watched in large majority by women over 35, Lifetime's original shows have all won more and more viewers since their fall premieres, and last month helped lead the 15-year-old cable channel to its highest ratings ever.