For all their high-tech weaponry, snazzy homes and evil intentions, the bad guys in ”Drug Wars: The Cocaine Cartel” (8 p.m. Sunday and Monday on NBC-Ch. 5) aren`t very different from the cattle rustlers of old Westerns.
Hollywood is always able to reduce and sanitize reality until it makes a neat package of good guys vs. bad guys.
That point is driven home when comparing ”Drug Wars” with another drug- based program, premiering at 8 p.m. Friday on the Arts & Entertainment cable network.
”DEA” is a six-episode journey behind the scenes with the men and women of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Producer Christopher Jeans was granted unprecedented access and he provides a gritty, irresistible look at DEA doings.
The first episode, ”Undercover Eddie,” chronicles Los Angeles special agent Eddie Follis` attempt to simultaneously trap some international drug dealers, money launderers and traffickers in weapons.
Subsequent episodes will travel to Italy, Bolivia, New York and the Mexican border to bring us other agents and cases.
”DEA,” part of the network`s ”Investigative Reports” series, packs an authoritative punch made of immediacy and intimacy. The characters that Eddie encounters are menacing, his boss frustratingly careful. The danger is real.
”This guy Lancaster,” says Eddie, referring to a muscle-bound thug he`s setting up, ”would take my life in a heartbeat.”
Of course, ”Drug Wars” cannot match this. It also lacks the stylishness of last year`s ”Drug Wars: The Camarena Story.”
Although it does appear to be well researched and earnest, its principal problems are a flaccid script, a lot of cardboard characters and the unfortunate casting of a dour Alex McArthur as a DEA agent trying to break the Medellin cartel in Colombia.
Other actors, among them Dennis Farina as DEA honcho, and John Glover as a nutty smuggler, are fine. The bad guys look sleazy.
But the four hours drag. And some of the dialogue!
”The raise will come in time,” says a Colombian cop to his wife.
”So will the Messiah,” she says. ”But he doesn`t need a new washing machine.”
Many people get shot and killed (even burned alive) in ”Drug Wars.” In
”Undercover Eddie” not a bullet is fired. But there is no question which one is more exciting. Reality triumphs again.
Channel hopping . . .
– ”She Woke Up” (8 p.m. Sunday, ABC-Ch. 7) and when she did, there was a problem. In a coma for 14 months, the very, very wealthy Claudia Parr
(Lindsay Wagner) awakens to learn that the reason for her lengthy nap was an attempted murder. Someone tried to drown her in her bathtub.
She has little memory of the event, but for some disturbing flashbacks of a person in a black mask trying to hold her head under the water.
Was it her husband, Sloan (David Dukes), a polo-playing womanizer?
What about younger sister Alix (Maureen Mueller), an artist who started a torrid affair with Sloan while Claudia was in a coma?
Her stepmother (Frances Sterhagen) is a possiblility, isn`t she, having always to beg Claudia for money to keep her museum of ancient artifacts afloat?
These are the principal suspects, and the film does a good job keeping us as in the dark as is Wagner. There are red herrings galore.
Wagner is quite good. I`ve always thought her one of television`s most underrated talents, unfairly burdened by her ”Bionic Woman”-hood.
This sort of soapy thriller has been done a zillion times before. But
”She Woke Up” ranks as one of the best of the crowd.
– Charm is a fragile thing.
Those who watched 1990`s Emmy-winning TV movie called ”The Incident”
will realize just how fragile when you tune in to ”Against Her Will: Incident in Baltimore” (8 p.m. Sunday, CBS-Ch. 2).
Both films feature Walter Matthau as rumpled lawyer Harmon Cobb. In the first film, his manner was undeniably attractive and came wrapped in a sturdy, complex story. In this film, he has been turned into a cantankerous codger and placed in a contrived mess.
Set in the 1940s, the film has Cobb, his widowed daughter-in-law (Susan Blakely) and granddaughter moving to Baltimore, where he takes new job, moves into a new house and drives a new car. This new life comes courtesy of a former adversary, Judge Stoddard Bell (Henry Morgan), who feels responsible for ruining Cobb`s life in the first ”Incident.”
Cobb`s job is little more than picking up checks in Bell`s lucrative practice. Feeling underutilized, he decides to get involved in a messy case concerning a woman being kept against her will in a mental institution.
He goes up against sleazy doctors and the state itself, all the while looking haggard and spouting, ”Holy Chicago!”
There`s also a sappy subplot involving Blakely`s romance with a nerdy teacher that seems to exist for no other reason than to fluff up the limp plot. It only makes bad worse.
Short takes . . .
”America With the Top Down” (8 p.m. Friday, PBS-Ch. 11) is two hours that follow a convertible through six states from Canada to the Rio Grande on U.S. Highway 281. It is not the best way for the new ”Travels” season to begin, as college professor Alan Schroder and comic Jimmy Tingle make boring companions. But the 14-show season does offer plenty of terrific and personal pieces. Watch for ”The Grand Tour” in a few weeks, as filmmaker Les Blank accompanies a 22-cities-in-14-days tour of Europe. And in April catch ”L.A. Is It,” a spirited, poetic view by writer John Gregory Dunne.
Want to see what all the crossover hoopla`s about? ”This Is Garth Brooks” (8 p.m. Friday, NBC-Ch. 5) makes a fine showcase for the chart-topping country sensation. He gives it his all in a concert taped in Texas that`s filled with songs (oddly including a couple of Billy Joel numbers), special effects and stunts. Brooks will put you in mind of a `70s rock-`n`-
roller. He`s that highly charged.
I haven`t had the chance to watch all four hours of ”16 Days of Glory:
Calgary `88” (1 p.m. Sunday, PBS-Ch. 11), but what I`ve seen tells me that filmmaker Bud Greenspan has lost none of his magic touch. As they have with previous Olympic documentaries, his cameras have a way of revealing intimate and powerful moments often ignored by network TV. This is a winner.
Local producer Diane Whiteley does a fine job on the third installment in the ”New Explorers” series. ”Test Tube Zoo” (6:30 p.m. Sunday, WTTW-Ch. 11) shows us experts working to save endangered species. Dr. Betty Dresser of the Cincinnati Zoo is amazing.
Interesting inside stuff on ”Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas” (10:05 p.m. Sunday, Showtime) as the director talks about the making of ”The Last Picture Show” and
”Texasville” and we meet some of the people who shaped and shared those experiences.
