Billy Connolly is not the first and won`t be the last talented performer to be spindled and mutilated by network knuckleheads.
This often-brilliant Scottish comic made his first network series foray as the replacement for Howard Hesseman during the last limp season of ”Head of the Class.” He returns in the title role of ”Billy,” a new series that is-but for a distinctive Scottish brogue-anything but fresh.
Its most obvious models are the feature film ”Green Card” and the mysteriously durable ”Who`s the Boss?” But it also has purloined parts, jokes, settings and sentiments from any number of other sitcoms.
Connolly plays the gregarious college professor Bill McGregor, who, having forgotten to renew his visa and faced with being deported, marries a recently divorced single mom.
Mary Springer (Marie Marshall) weds Billy to help pay the bills. He sleeps in the basement. She is not uncomfortable about having a stranger cohabiting with her young kids. There are three: two cuter-than-cute-can-be little girls (Clara Bryant and Natanya Ross) and a boy (Johnny Galecki) who, at 14, is conveniently at the age at which he is beginning to encounter the sort of puberty-prodded dilemmas that call for the advice of an older man.
”I suppose you`re an expert on boys,” says Mary.
”I used to be one,” says Billy.
In the episodes I`ve seen (the premiere airs in what will be its regular timeslot, 8:30 p.m. Friday on ABC-Ch. 7), Billy dispenses advice about girls and, in a section that dully dominates the second episode, the evils of smoking.
It`s all derivative drivel, and already there`s some sexual sparring between Billy and Mary. Although Connolly doesn`t rein in his energy, it`s wasted.
I would like to believe that Connolly might one day find a vehicle for his talents, or might start saying no when dumb producers come calling. But I also fear that if he keeps bulking up his TV resume with this sort of junk, eventually nobody will be interested.
”BILLY”
A new comedy series. Created by Rich Eustis and Michael Elias, who also wrote the premiere episode, which was directed by Sam Weisman and produced by Frank Pace. With Billy Connolly, Marie Marshall, Clara Bryant, Johnny Galecki and Natanya Ross. Airing at 8:30 p.m. Fridays on ABC-Ch. 7.
Rival disappointments
– One slice of Americana-and big-time ratings surprise-deserves another, I suppose. And so Hallmark Fall of Fame follows last year`s delightful
”Sarah, Plain and Tall” with ”O Pioneers!” (8 p.m. Sunday, CBS-Ch. 2), based on Willa Cather`s 1913 novel set in 1880s Nebraska.
Trying to look dowdy, Jessica Lange stars as Alexandra Bergson, the strong-willed farmer`s daughter who brings the family land profitably to life while allowing herself to wither into spinsterhood.
Lange takes her role too seriously while director Glenn Jordan and writer Robert Lenski amazingly miss every nuance of Cather`s tale. All the men are colorless. The events-from the return of Alexandra`s long-gone love to a violent death for two young lovers-lack drama. The film is pretty, but it`s emotionally barren.
– Bruce Curtis fills his diary, as do many would-be teenage existentialists, with ideas that, taken out of context, could prove troublesome. In ”Deadly Betrayal: The Bruce Curtis Story” (8 p.m. Sunday on NBC-Ch. 5), the problems caused by the diary are serious when Curtis goes on trial for the murder of his best friend`s mother.
There`s not a familiar face in the cast of this Canadian-made film and that helps for a while. But the movie follows a tired traditional formula of flashbacks piecing together the particulars.
So, we see the unlikely friendship formed at boarding school, Curtis
(Simon Reynolds) attracted to Scott Franz (Jaimz Woolvett) ”because he likes to try things,” such as pounding back vodka and inhaling ether; we see Curtis visit Franz, where he encounters not the mansion Franz has described but a low-rent cottage and bumpkin folks; we observe Franz`s stepfather`s violent nature; we see some guns, then . . . Bang! Bang!
The boys hide the mother`s and stepfather`s bodies in the woods and are quickly captured. Then the story moves to the jailhouse/courtroom settings.
Curtis` lawyer, inefficient or plain stupid, allows things to go wrong. When Franz takes the stand to ”interpret” notations from Curtis` diary, his testimony flies in the face of what might reasonably have been allowed.
When the conclusion quickly comes and the screen is filled with factoids about what happened to the real-life participants, you`ll be left wondering how justice could have been so sidetracked.
Channel hopping . . .
– ”American Giants: Legends of the Negro League” (6 p.m. Saturday, WGN- Ch. 9) is a well-meaning but dull attempt to pay homage to some of the great black baseball players who never had the chance at major-league glory.
Thirty minutes is simply not enough time to tell the story. Either Satchel Paige or Josh Gibson could fill that time by himself.
The way this program is structured-straight chronological fashion, with a few interviews-fails to give us a sense of the energy-or the deprivations and degradations-of the Negro Leagues. We get bits and pieces but not a compelling portrait.
Host Morgan Freeman wrestles with an awkward text, and gospel singers appear for no reason. The interviews, though, are pretty good.
”We didn`t play for the money,” says ”Double Duty” Radcliff, a legend still frisky in old age. ”We played for the love of the game.”
Take that, all you .250-hitting millionaires!
– In brief: OK, OK, maybe he`s not as hip as any of ”The Simpsons,” but Bugs Bunny can still make me laugh, and he`s especially funny, along with foes Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd, in ”Bugs Bunny Creature Features” (7 p.m. Saturday, CBS-Ch. 2), a new animated special that includes a new cartoon called ”Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers” and the TV premiere of two theatrical shorts, ”The Duxorcist” and ”Night of the Living Duck.” . . . In ”The People`s Agenda” (8 p.m. Sunday, CNN), Baltimore is the setting for a series of reports on the problems and concerns in the lives of what host Bernard Shaw calls ”ordinary Americans.” Much of the material and words are variations of themes we`ve heard and seen before. But over two hours, they effectively show that this country`s in a daunting mess.
