The fall prime-time television lineup always looks so fastidious and ordered, laid out in a neat little grid like some periodic table of the situations.
There is nothing scientific and very little rational, however, about this schedule whose predominant element usually ends up being boron.
Exasperated viewers trying to make sense of the annual laboratory of willy-nilly schedule changes, lookalike new shows and overpublicized dreck might find themselves wondering if the programmers are wearing white lab coats or in-patient garb. That there is such chaos only makes sense: The schedule is the byproduct of crafty deal-making, show ownership issues, obeisance to focus groups, furiously wishful thinking, and which actor’s kids go to school with which network executive’s. Put another way, it is the work of people who live mostly in Southern California.
How else to explain that the same schedule that brings back the sublime Bob Newhart (“George & Leo”) also offers more quality time with Andrew Dice Clay (“Hitz”)? That Jenny McCarthy, for her new sitcom (“Jenny”), got nearly as good a deal (22 episodes) as did Ted Danson last year? That somebody not employed by McDonald’s thought a good name for a series about an amusingly introspective lawyer would be “Ally McBeal”?
If TV programming were more like science, and less like 17th Century medicine, most of the 37 new series would not be dead by season’s end next May. Nobody would have found in the research a reason to extend Tony Danza yet another invitation to mug (“The Tony Danza Show”), and David Caruso, having so demonstratively fled the nest of television (“NYPD Blue”), would not be allowed to spurn the biological imperative and return (“Michael Hayes”).
About that failure rate. Only 17 series from last fall survived the nine-month infancy period to land one of the new season’s 123 time slots. That’s still an improvement over previous years as the six networks, losing audience each year to cable, are learning to demonstrate more patience with series and sifting through each other’s rejects for salvage projects. “Cosby,” which got a bit of a makeover during the summer (a day-care center next door, for one), and “Spin City,” which moves to Wednesday night, are the leaders of the returning pack. Ex-ABC shows “Clueless,” “Family Matters” and “Step by Step” all found homes on new networks, moving to UPN, CBS and CBS, respectively.
Another eight series that got their start in midseason last year also live on, most notably “King of the Hill” (Fox), “The Practice” (ABC), and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (WB).
“Roseanne” the show is out and Tom Arnold the ex is in, at least for the moment (“The Tom Show”). (Meanwhile, Roseanne the person is preparing to launch her daytime talk show. Most of the preparations involve desperately hoping that Oprah will abdicate at the end of this season.) Danson’s show, “Ink,” is gone: It was non-permanent, apparently. “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “Grace Under Fire” are on hiatus. “Wings” has flown the coop, as have “Martin,” “Jeff Foxworthy” and–there is a deity–“Married . . . with Children.” America, you won’t have the Bundys to pull each other’s fingers anymore.
But the real question everybody wants answered at this time of year, besides what happened to the Bears, is what’s exciting and different among the new series?
Pregnant pause.
Followed by short nap.
There are enough familiar faces to fill a high school yearbook. Besides Caruso, playing a straight-arrow federal prosecutor, we have boyish Fred Savage (“The Wonder Years”) as a 1990s corporate droog in “Working.” James Belushi is an aspiring high-tech security guy in “Total Security,” and Danny Aiello is a low-tech investigator guy in “Dellaventura.” Bryant Gumbel takes a magazine show (“Public Eye”) and Gregory Hines a self-titled sitcom. Kirstie Alley (“Cheers”) returns as a lingerie model-turned-catalog maven (“Veronica’s Closet”), and Kadeem Hardison (“Another World”) plays a sportswriter (“Between Brothers”). Kevin Nealon and Richard Lewis pair up as mismatched comedy writers (“Hiller & Diller”), while Judd Hirsch joins Newhart in his series, another sort of modern-day “Odd Couple” and the most immediately promising of the new comedies. Ice-T shows up in a cons-as-cops show (“Players”) and Richard Roundtree (“Shaft”) in a drama about urban social policy (“413 Hope St.”).
Backstage, producers Steven Bochco and David Milch (“NYPD Blue”) are back with a new cop series, another strong effort (“Brooklyn South”), this one for CBS, and with “Total Security.” Kevin Williamson, who wrote the big-screen hit “Scream,” is behind a very frank, very daring, teen drama coming from WB at midseason (“Dawson’s Creek”). “Hiller & Diller” comes from the movie screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (“City Slickers”). David E. Kelley (“Chicago Hope,” “Picket Fences,” “The Practice”) successfully blends humor with drama in “Ally McBeal,” as refreshing and well made as it is ineptly named.
The four main networks, taking a cue from the upstarts WB and UPN, have decided to let minorities have some shows again. “413 Hope St.,” “Between Brothers,” “Gregory Hines” and “Built to Last” feature mostly African-American casts, while “Union Square” serves up the New York melting pot in a diner. CBS head programmer Les Moonves was moved to joke that you could no longer call his outfit the “Caucasian Broadcasting Service.”
It made big news recently when scientists cloned a sheep. Television has been practicing cloning for decades, not to mention understanding wholeheartedly the sheep mentality. The sci-fi success of “The X-Files” finds replications in “Sleepwalkers” (NBC), “The Visitor” (Fox) and UPN’s new Thursday sci-fi movie slot. ABC’s gold strike last year, with the delightful “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,” means that Friday family time this year has more magic than, say, David Copperfield’s marriage: “Meego,” “You Wish,” and “Teen Angel” all incorporate fanciful powers.
ABC is the network with the most to prove this season. Except for “Sabrina,” “The Drew Carey Show,” and, late in the season, “Ellen,” it suffered through a disastrous 1996-97. It has had the best advertising campaign over the summer, with its yellow-backdrop slogans cleverly mocking those who fret about TV laying waste to the republic. And while most of its new efforts don’t exactly sparkle, its return of “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights seems a no brainer for success. But 15 of its 24 shows are owned or co-owned in house, according to the ad agency Leo Burnett, suggesting that becoming a wing of Disney may have the network thinking accounting before it thinks programming.
CBS is trying to build on its growth from last season, where it returned to wooing its traditional older audience. Its most interesting moves are its direct assault on ABC’s family franchise early Friday nights, and its bloc of three dramas targeting men on Tuesdays.
NBC, the ratings leader, dumped its Monday movie in order to air there the four leggy single women comedies that have all spent gestation time amid its powerhouse Thursday lineup. Brooke Shields, Sharon Lawrence, Lea Thompson and Tea Leoni will try to grab the female sitcom audience that used to belong to CBS. And moving “NewsRadio” to Tuesday gives NBC a comedy grouping there (“Mad About You,” “NewsRadio,” “Frasier”) even stronger than it has on Thursdays, where its two newcomers (“Union Square” and “Veronica’s Closet”) are neither groundbreaking nor sidesplitting.
Fox thinks it may have finally found a good follow-up for “Melrose Place” with the oft-mentioned “Ally McBeal.” This comes after satisfying its other longstanding quest, for a show to follow “The Simpsons,” with “King of the Hill.”
The two junior networks, meanwhile, have donned the rose-hued specs and each will have added a night of programming by the new year, growing to four. UPN won the ratings battle last year, but WB had the critics’ darling in “Buffy.” That trend continues this season: “Dawson’s Creek,” due to debut in December or January (along with the drama “Three”) looks to win a similar cachet for the network that Bugs is building, while UPN’s freshmen are unremarkable.
If you haven’t got all that straight, don’t worry. It will be very different by the end of November. Remember, this can only be termed “rocket science” if the space vehicle in question is called Mir.
Sunday
“World’s Funniest . . .” (6 p.m., Fox; debuts Sept. 21): The ellipsis is the red flag, a sign that the funniest anything could follow in this collection of ostensibly amusing video clips. The world’s funniest . . . gastroenterologist, for instance, might not actually be very droll at all. The world’s funniest gastroenterologist burning himself on a barbecue grill could, however, earn some chuckles. With ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on hiatus, the Fox footage assemblage just may find an audience. In the words of Homer Simpson, “It’s funny because I don’t know them.”
“Jenny” (7:30 p.m., NBC; Sept. 28): The ambitious Mother McAuley grad’s plan to step off of cable, out of the Internet and into mainstream America starts with this sitcom. It’s the story of a Utica, N.Y., girl who inherits her unknown father’s Los Angeles-area home and, don’t you know, decides to move in. The pilot I saw is undergoing some changes: Instead of working for a former child star, she and her hometown pal will take a variety of jobs. The surprise is that McCarthy is considerably lower key than in her spazalopolis days on MTV’s “Singled Out” or in her dreadful stab at sketch comedy, also on MTV. She still tends to get a tone in her voice that might be described as “ticked-off head cheerleader,” but it is something of a triumph for her to say she seems like an average appealing sitcom actress in what is standard-issue stuff. Rafer Weigel, son of local colorful sportscoat model Tim, plays her tenant, a filmmaker, and gets some good laughs as a lovestruck loser.
“The Tom Show” (8 p.m., WB; Sept. 7): Tom Selleck has a new series in the works, but this is not that Tom. Tom Cruise would be fun on TV–he could play, oh, the cocky young guy–but it’s not him either. Tom Scholz is the mastermind behind 1970s album-rock legends Boston–but no career change for Mr. Scholz. No, folks, it’s Tom Arnold, the best loved of Roseanne’s ex-husbands, taking another stab at sitcom stardom. He plays an L.A. TV producer dumped by his talk show host wife who has to move back to St. Paul and run a local morning show. He’s got two daughters in tow, and the comedy is as predictable as the situation. Arnold coaxes maximum mileage from his Midwestern grin, but the best thing about this is Ed McMahon doing his hale-fellow routine as the host.
“Alright Already” (7:30 p.m., WB; Sept. 7): In addition to a being standup comedian, Carol Leifer has been one of “Seinfeld’s” top writers. She ventures out on her own here as the owner of a Miami optical shop whose parents live in an area retirement condo. It’s uneven, and I’d be surprised if Leifer’s persona will grow on people. But there are enough sharp lines and strong concepts to make “Alright Already” (originally titled “Ocean Drive”) moderately promising. Best is her 20something sister, living with mom and dad, and taking far too readily to life as, as Carol puts it, a “Golden Girl.”
Monday
“TimeCop” (7 p.m., ABC; Sept. 22): ABC’s quest for a companion piece to the popular “Monday Night Football” finds it turning to a TV version of the movie. I didn’t see the flick. I haven’t seen the TV show either, as no tape is yet available. But it’s about a cop who patrols the time continuum to keep bad folk from going in to muck up history.
“Ally McBeal” (8 p.m., Fox; Sept. 8): You think the name for David E. Kelley’s new series isn’t great. Then you hear who plays her: Calista Flockhart IS Ally McBeal. After the moniker woes, though, this becomes a delightful program, part dramatic love story, part comedy, as young Boston lawyer McBeal finds herself working alongside the (married) ex-boyfriend she’s still in love with. There are regular voiceovers from the winningly self-critical McBeal (Flockhart is unstintingly charming in the role), and Kelley cleverly dramatizes his character’s thoughts to present a kind of hyperconsciousness. If only someone would serve McBeal tea.
“Good News” (8 p.m., UPN; Aug. 25): The best of the new series on UPN, which isn’t saying much. A young pastor takes over an inner-city congregation founded by a domineering man. Half the congregation wanted the longtime assistant pastor to get the job and follows him across the street to start a new church. The jokes are okay, the actors are better, and at least it doesn’t rely on rampant innuendo or interpersonal malice for its humor.
“George & Leo” (8:30 p.m., CBS; Sept. 15): Bob Newhart could read an apartment lease and make it funny. The material is better here in what is easily the season’s best new sitcom. Newhart is leading a quiet life on Martha’s Vineyard, semi-retired, running a bookstore and hanging out with his son the chef, who’s about to get married. The son decides to invite his bride’s estranged father to the wedding, and he turns out to be Judd Hirsch: a Vegas magician/mafia bagman on the run with mob money. Hirsch is Oscar, of course, and Newhart, who gets stuck putting him up, is Felix. But that’s forgivable, because this concept hasn’t looked this fresh since, oh, Oscar and Felix.
“Brooklyn South” (9 p.m., CBS; Sept. 22): The most talked about new series finds Steven Bochco and David Milch (“NYPD Blue”) heading out on a conceptual limb to bring us a cop show. It is another good one, however, a return to the “Hill Street Blues” idea of following roll call, beat cops and life at a supercharged station house. Even James B. Sikking from “Hill Street” is back, here as a pesky internal affairs guy. The violence and the language of the opener have been controversial, per Bochco’s none-too-subtle publicity strategy, but it is nothing you haven’t seen or heard on TV before, and it feels more like realism than shock value. The proportion of white, male cops, though, seems awfully high for Brooklyn 1997, and there are early warning signs of the usual Bochco trouble writing women characters. On the other hand, there is no Fay Furillo.
Tuesday
“Over the Top” (7:30 p.m., ABC; Sept. 23): Tim Curry is a fired soap-opera star, vamping his way through life in the British grand thespian manner. Annie Potts, new to the city from the South, runs an embattled New York hotel, with a couple of kids in tow. They used to be married, and now Curry has set up camp in her hotel. She gets talked into having one drink the first night, and it is a measure of the level of comedy here that the very next scene sees her passed out. Curry’s misanthropy toward the kids is fun though.
“Michael Hayes” (8 p.m., CBS; Sept. 15): Bochco and Milch are back on Mondays with another cop series and so, the next night, is their breakout, and breakaway, star from the first season of “NYPD Blue,” David Caruso. There is no denying Caruso’s carroty magnetism as he plays a righteous ex-cop-turned-acting U.S. Attorneyin Manhattan, a neighborhood kid who now has to start putting away some of the same people who raised him. The writers don’t miss a trick, giving Hayes the big prosecution against a U.S. representative, the wayward brother fresh out of prison, the neglected nephew in need of a father figure and the early-stages girlfriend who takes a couple for the sake of the story. Those all sound stock, but they manage to work as the series stakes out an early brooding tone, not unlike Caruso himself.
“Hitz” (8 p.m., WB; Aug. 26): Andrew Dice Clay as a boorish record-company executive browbeating two young talent scouts for the company. Capsule review: Missez.
“Head Over Heels” (8:30 p.m., WB; Aug. 26): Sexual hijinks and prominent cleavage at a Miami dating service, run by two brothers who want, respectively, love and sex. The first episode was like being pawed on a first date by a leering, cigar-smoking lout, one who is all alone in laughing at his jokes.
“Hiller & Diller” (8:30 p.m., ABC; Sept. 23): Two TV comedy writing partners, played by Kevin Nealon and Richard Lewis, muddle through. Nealon’s the family man, Lewis the hipster philanderer. A somewhat better version of a conventional sitcom, thanks to movie writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel creating editions of themselves, but still so very conventional. The first episode’s last scene, with mawkish lessons in friendship and fatherhood, may give you a chance to revisit your dinner.
“Dellaventura” (9 p.m., CBS; Sept. 23): Still no tape on this one, but it casts Danny Aiello as a private eye in the capper to CBS’ attempt to grab male viewers with an action-and-investigation package of three dramas Tuesday.
Wednesday
“The Tony Danza Show” (7 p.m., NBC; Sept. 24): The Energizer Bunny of the situation comedy rolls into view again. And again he’s beating the drum as a guy named Tony, again as a single dad (teen daughters), again in New York. This time, he’s a magazine sportswriter (a treacly one, to judge by the column he dictates). Danza is a pro, but it’s a slobbery kind of professionalism. No sitcom star is more eager to be liked, and it becomes suffocating to watch. If we all send him a biscuit and a pat on the head, maybe he’ll go sit in a corner somewhere.
“Built to Last” (7:30 p.m., NBC; Sept. 24): NBC discovers black people can be funny too. After years of white urbanite comedies, the leading network gives us this vehicle built around comedian Royale Watkins. It’s a version of his life and material, as he plays, in a stretch, Royale Watkins. Royale/Royale decides to stay in Washington, D.C., and run the family construction business rather than taking a computer job in California. Watkins seems a little bland, and the comedy familiar and generic. Paul Winfield, as the patriarch, spends episode one bemoaning the heart-healthy food he has to eat. A disappointment, this is more “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” than “Roc.”
“Dharma & Greg” (7:30 p.m., ABC; Sept. 24): She was raised by hippies, he by WASPs. But their eyes meet, and the free spirit and the “fed,” as her father later terms his prosecutor son-in-law, fall instantly in love and tie instantly the knot. Now they have to break it to the folks. The first episode was, while not exactly good, moderately better, I can acknowledge, than my deep dislike for it would indicate. I think the problem is that I would rather listen to the entirety of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” than put up with one more attempt to make pop culture based on 1960s iconography. Jenna Elfman was quite good in last season’s unjustly neglected “Townies,” but here doesn’t take Dharma past the writers’ caricature material of advocating high colonics and outdoor sex. Isn’t a colonic by definition low?
“Public Eye with Bryant Gumbel” (8 p.m., CBS; Oct. 1): You’d think the former “Today” host was building a nuclear submarine, so tight-lipped has he been about his new newsmagazine, which enters a field crowded by a fourth night of “Dateline NBC” this fall and a second of “20/20.” “It will be oblong in shape and travel beneath the surface of the water,” is about as specific as Gumbel’s public comments have gotten, though the show is expected to try to take full advantage of his interviewing skills. He has assembled an interesting cast of contributors, including Carol Marin in a minor role. The proof will be in the stories.
“Working” (8:30 p.m., NBC; Oct. 8): I had the opposite reaction to this as to “Dharma & Greg.” I liked it better than the pilot actually merited. The reason is that it offered a cleverly executed hyper-reality in dramatizing the cubicle-and-coffeemaker drooginess of modern corporate life. Management shuffles through the corridors in packs. A secretary has a list of skills and duties to fill a legal pad, and a Yale degree to boot. Staffers cheerfully plan to prepare all meals a la cubicle. Though less cherubic, Fred Savage (“The Wonder Years”) still can project the wide-eyed innocence to make his experiences as the corporate drone, the new employee in this regimented, illogical world, interesting. Maurice Godin is utterly convincing, and extremely funny, as his blustery oaf of a boss.
Thursday
“Nothing Sacred” (7 p.m., ABC; Sept. 18): One more series about a minister, surely the indication of some sort of millennial uncertainty. This is the one most specifically about religion, and, although it will prove controversial in its refusal to embrace blind faith and rigid devotion to doctrine, it is also the most religious. It actually grapples with the role of the church in modern society and the role of the modern man in priestly vestments. The young priest at the center of this is reflexively sardonic, skeptical about the existence of God, and with a monster chip on his shoulder about society’s injustices. He prefers funerals to weddings because he knows they’ll stay dead, and he tells his parishioners things like “I was not ordained to be a sexual traffic cop.” It’s hard to imagine this becoming popular, but the questing, introspective nature of it is quietly thrilling and, yes, inspirational.
“Union Square” (7:30 p.m., NBC; Sept. 25): NBC dips its finger in the New York melting pot for this new comedy about a diner where the paths of people on the move intersect: struggling playwright, struggling actress, struggling diner owner, struggling counterman, etc. From the creators of “Caroline in the City,” it plays bright, peppy and pretty broad, but with a veneer of professionalism that will probably keep people from bothering to change the channel between “Friends” and “Seinfeld.”
“Between Brothers” (7:30 p.m., Fox; Sept. 11): This one is awfully close to last season’s short-lived “Chicago Sons,” except that Kadeem Hardison and Dondre T. Whitfield are the leads. Two brothers again room together in a Chicago apartment, surely the only one in town with purple countertops and a purple refrigerator; again one is responsible, one a ladies’ man; again, it’s uninspired stuff. Hardison’s character, our second sportswriter of the new season, writes for the fictional Chicago Examiner. A three-paper town? In 1997?
“Cracker” (8 p.m, ABC: Sept. 18): If you know the British version, starring the superb Robbie Coltrane, you’ll probably have a hard time with this. If you don’t, you’ll find it an unusually intelligent crime-solving series and be impressed with the depth that Robert Pastorelli (“Murphy Brown”) shows. He’s a psychologist with a mini-mall office, bill problems, a teaching job, a new surprise baby, an inability to relate to his family and a serious problem deciding whether he hates or is infatuated with himself. He also works as a forensic shrink with the L.A. cops, with a smug manner borne of stunning success.
“413 Hope St.” (8 p.m., Fox, Sept. 11): Not numbingly earnest, which is high praise for this mostly successful attempt to do a version of “ER,” only in an urban crisis center. Richard Roundtree is the wealthy businessman who started it after his son was gunned down for his sneakers at that address. He runs the place with necessarily inflexible rules and a feeling that you can only save those who want to save themselves. Director Eric Laneuville keeps the pace vigorous, fending off preachiness and drawing memorable characters instantly amid the corps of volunteers and professionals who keep the place working. Damon Wayans is an executive producer and gets a cowriting credit on the first episode.
“Veronica’s Closet” (8:30 p.m., NBC; Sept. 25): Here’s a show that needn’t have vacated that storage room. It’s too bad. I was hopeful the positive advance buzz for Kirstie Alley’s return to TV and Thursday nights would amount to something. It came from the “Friends” writing/producing team, and the concept–hijinks at a lingerie catalog and retailing outfit–seemed to pack enough potential. But from the crudely cross-promotional opening (Jay Leno interviewing Alley’s character) to the shrill insistence on making it about Alley’s weight and wayward husband, this was unpleasant, unclever stuff.
Friday
“Players” (7 p.m., NBC; Oct. 17): “High concept,” in this case, means the writers must have been high when they thought it up. Ice-T leads a corps of three wisecracking cons released from prison in order to help the good guys nab crooks playing very hard to get. The trio seem to have spent all their prison time studying the back-and-forth banter in the “Lethal Weapon” movies. Implausible crime-solving problems greet this implausible team. No problem: They solve them implausibly.
“The Visitor” (7 p.m., Fox; Sept. 19): John Corbett from “Northern Exposure” plays a pilot who disappeared during World War II in the Bermuda Triangle, had aliens messing with his brain for several decades and then crash lands on Earth, where everybody — human and alien — wants to track him down. He’s got a secret mission to complete, though, and he uses his powers to access the metaphysical to do it. The big question is whether he’ll be able to do so before the show is canceled. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, creators of “Independence Day,” are behind this series which is, despite the extravagant plot, quite predictable.
“Meego” (7:30 p.m., CBS; Sept. 19): Bronson Pinchot is the alien Meego living with Jonathan Lipnicki’s big family as the nanny. The kids think he’s cool because he has special powers on Earth. Absent, though, is the power of comedy. Pretty lame, even for kid’s fare.
“The Gregory Hines Show” (8 p.m., CBS; Sept. 19): Again, this aims to grab kids and not turn off adults. It might well do so, depicting a warm, believable relationship between new widower Hines, a Chicago editor, and his son. It goes too heavy too soon on the “I’m not just your father; I’m your friend” stuff, and the writing–from the same team that did Tuesday’s “Over the Top”–lurches about a bit. But Hines is eminently likable.
“You Wish” (8 p.m., ABC; Sept. 26): For this, ABC let “Family Matters” and “Step by Step” go to CBS? A really insufferable male genie comes to live with the family headed by single mom Harley Jane Kozak. You might say child viewers could go for his Doug Henning hair and low-rent Robin Williams impersonation, except that another part of his personality is to always be coming on to Kozak, which puts it in the realm of uncomfortable for parents and kids. This is an imitation Persian rug.
“Teen Angel” (8:30 p.m., ABC; Sept. 26): Think “Ghost,” except Patrick Swayze gets much younger and less pumped, and Demi Moore becomes his high-school bud. That’s right, it’s a series about relying on your dead friend as guardian angel. Amusing, in a dopey adolescent kind of way.
Saturday
“C-16: FBI” (7 p.m., ABC; Sept. 27): It’s the name of an FBI hot-dog team, the elite major case squad. They make their own rules and they’ve got cocky-but-sensitive Eric Roberts as their leader and D.B. Sweeney as part of the team. They may even have cool jackets and specially shaped badges, though I didn’t see them in the pilot. The series is well made but eminently unsurprising. Unless you’re just cuckoo for cop tales, I can’t see much of a reason to watch this or, really, what makes them so special. Their first case is the ‘napping of a local prosecutor’s kid.
“Total Security” (8 p.m., ABC; Sept. 27): James Belushi plays a hustler private eye trying to get on with a high-tech security firm in this second Steven Bochco series of the fall. He’s a jaunty wiseacre whose irresistibility to the ladies is more than a little hard to fathom. But the security concern, which handles crime prevention and cases that the police can’t, is an interesting milieu, and Bochco and his people are masters of making a case believable in a minimum of time. Entertaining stuff.
“Sleepwalkers” (9 p.m., NBC; Nov. 1): A series that believes in living up to its title. This new piece to NBC’s Saturday night “thrillogy,” as it is mismarketed, is essentially the movie “Flatliners” on a TV budget. The stars run a clinic that helps people with bad dreams by linking to their unconscious in a kind of mind meld with the clinic’s tank-top wearing dreaming specialists. You know how when someone tries to tell you about his dream and you nod at the parts that seem interesting to him, but really he might as well be recounting golf holes he’s played? This series is like that. It might cure your own bad dreams, though, by helping you doze off.
