This weekend offers what amounts to a Robert Urich Film Festival, as the actor appears in two new made-for-television movies on two networks.
Neither is very good, but in both Urich-playing two very different characters-exhibits many of the qualities that increasingly convince me that he`s the logical heir to the Most Reliable TV Star crown first worn by David Janssen and currently-but perhaps not for long-the property of the recently rejuvenated James Garner.
”Stranger at My Door” (8 p.m. Friday, CBS-Ch. 2) is a contrived and convoluted story about a woman (Markie Post) who, trying to escape from her Southern rich-boy husband (Michael Beck), who she has seen commit a murder, winds up on a farm run by a transplanted Pennsylvanian (Urich) and his two kids. They spar, tell lies to each other and eventually fall in such deep love and we-only-have-each-other desperation that they go to all sorts of lengths- some of them bloody-to drive off together in his pickup truck.
”. . . And Then She Was Gone” (8 p.m. Sunday, NBC-Ch. 5) casts Urich as a sophisticated big-city businessman who gets caught up in a kidnapping. The little daughter of a single mother (Laura Gallagher) gets nabbed from her doorstep. Urich, riding the subway home (his BMW is locked in a garage), sees the little girl in person and on a ”missing” poster.
After a number of ridiculous twists, he gets drawn into the mother`s life and into playing a do-it-yourself cop as he uncovers a kid-selling racket.
In both films, Urich`s characters prove to be irresistible to women;
willing to risk physical harm for honor, truth or justice; tough when it counts; and with hair that is always slightly mussed, as if they`ve just been awakened from a long nap.
As in most of his previous TV work, with the notable exception of the bad guy he played in ”Lonesome Dove” (though even that shady fellow was likable), Urich expresses a palpable goodness. His is the most honest face on the tube; he is TV`s leading Boy Scout.
Although I would like to see Urich try roles that stretch his acting ability, he seems content to be television`s version of a puppy dog-cute, playful, loyal and with just enough bite to keep things interesting. He will be able to find TV work as long as he is able to keep trucking his easy charm. If he were really smart, he`d switch to news and grow up to be the new Walter Cronkite.
Channel hopping . . .
– The message of the season premiere of ”Nature” (7 p.m. Sunday on PBS- Ch. 11) is, Stop messing with the Earth. It is delivered in a powerful program called ”From the Heart of the Earth: The Elder Brothers` Warning,”
by the Kogi, a pre-Columbian tribe nestled in the mountains of Colombia.
Bringing the Kogi to public view for the first time, British filmmaker Alan Ereira has made a moving and beautiful film that centers on the Kogi warnings-that man is spoiling the planet-while incorporating elements of Colombian history and Kogi culture and mythology, and showing us how little the Kogi lifestyle has changed in several thousands of years.
They are a proud people, in harmony with a nature that they see being seriously threatened. It`s a wonderful, passionate work that packs a potent, poetic environmental message.
If you want to see the Kogi warning in one of its most horrific manifestations, watch also ”Fires of War” on the ”National Geographic Explorer” series (8 p.m. Sunday, TBS cable). It takes us to Kuwait and shows us the men trying to put out the 732 oil well fires set by retreating Iraqi troops. ”It is like something out of those `Mad Max` movies,” says one worker. It`s an environmental disaster of unprecedented if underreported magnitude.
”It`s not the end of the world, but you can see it from here,” says another worker.
It`s a terrifying view.
– On the syndicated show front: I like the fact that the latest television Tarzan is played by a guy named Wolf (Larson). He`s blond and well- built, and even shows a bit of acting ability in the premiere of ”Tarzan”
at 2 p.m. Sunday on WPWR-Ch. 50. The chimp playing Cheetah is cute.
”Lightning Force” (5 p.m. Sunday, WPWR-Ch. 50) is yet another variant of ”The Dirty Dozen”/”Mission Impossible” school, this time with four members of an anti-terrorist group taking on ”impossible” missions with the help of high-tech weaponry. It`s silly.
”Street Justice” (5 p.m. Sunday, WGN-Ch. 9) is better, mainly because it stars Carl Weathers, always a compelling presence, if only an adequate actor, as a plainclothes cop. Although the plot of the two-hour premiere is loony-Vietnam, Mafia killers, etc.-and Weathers` co-star, Bryan Genesse, is just another pretty boy, this series has the chance to become a fairly diverting action jaunt.
– ”Mission of the Shark,” a made-for-TV movie airing at 8 p.m. Sunday on CBS-Ch. 2 and starring Stacy Keach and Richard Thomas, is the long-overdue TV telling of the disaster that befell the USS Indianapolis in 1945, after delivering components of the atomic bomb to the island of Titian and the Elona Gay.
A Japanese sub sank the ship. About 850 survivors of the attack were plunged into the sea, where, during the next five days-since their mission was secret, no rescue team was dispatched-they were at the mercy of the elements and were attacked and eaten by packs of sharks.
In the end, when discovered accidentally by a patrol plane, only 317 men remained.
Keach plays ship`s captain Charles McVay, who was a scapegoat for the disaster. Thomas is the ship`s doctor. They perform well, given the limitations of their parts. The other actors are forced into simple caricatures: selfish/unselfish, hero/coward. The shark scenes are without, excuse me, bite. It`s just a bunch of screaming that doesn`t hint at the terror the men faced.
None of it is as scary as the scene in ”Jaws” in which Robert Shaw describes to Richard Dreyfuss the very same event. His words are more haunting than every juiced-up visual in this lengthy two hours.
