ghayes-2

This pilot for a new series is OK, but - as with many preliminary versions of a concept - can't quite settle on a tone. Knowing that this was a Jack Webb project makes it a little easier to see what they were trying for.

For example, the conversations between the main characters in the office, when not talking about the main case, are obviously meant to be humorous banter, akin to that between Friday and Gannon in Dragnet, or Reed and Malloy in Adam-12. The problem is that the actors aren't comfortable in their characters yet. Also, three-way banter is tougher than two-way. The result is simply confused dialogue, without the needed waits for reactions. This probably would have adjusted itself in a series as the actors drew the characters around themselves.

The story also suffers from the half-hour format. It's simply not enough time to develop the plot lines. The "Law and Order" franchise would solve this years later with the "two shows in one hour" breakdown of a police investigation in the first half hour and a prosecution in the second.

Finally, when Abe Strayhorn (Ed Nelson) is explaining to defense attorney Don Bates (Kenneth Tobey), why he is rejecting a plea deal and going for the manslaughter charges, his dialogue is 100% pure "Joe Friday lecture". The only thing missing is "OK, now let me tell *you* something..." Unfortunately, Nelson's delivery isn't up to the staccato punch of Jack Webb. Again, this might have smoothed out over time.

All in all, not terrible. It's just too unpolished for a good Jack Webb product.

Whether a separate project edited into an episode of "Emergency!", or an episode of "Emergency!" meant from the start as a backdoor pilot, this clearly*was* a trial run for another series idea, in this case about animal services.

Unfortunately, it fails on several levels.

First and foremost is dramatic jeopardy. The tension seems forced throughout this very long, slow hour. It's impossible to imagine sustaining a level of interest through multiple episodes of a series.

Then there's dialogue. There's a certain timbre and cadence to a "Joe Friday" lecture. Jack Webb had it (obviously), because he originated it. So did Robert Fuller. David Huddleston simply did not.

Finally, there are the production values. The level of OBVIOUS stock footage breaks the feeling of continuity, without adding anything.

Taken all together, an interesting concept tgat fails in both execution and viability.

This is not a great Perry Mason mystery, as it has a few too many coincidental events, and characters behaving in non-credible ways.

But for fans of classic 1960s TV, the show is filled with familiar and reliable actors, doing their level best with the material.

First is Billy Mumy, as noted by several previous reviewers, who was possibly the most dependable child performer of the early 60s. Here he is a good kid, trying to figure out who to trust with what he has and what he knows. One interesting thing is his interaction with Perry Mason. Looked at in the light of 2019 sensibilities, the scene where Perry offers Miles a ride home from the theatre might have a certain "creep" factor. (Miles doesn't yet know Mason, and declines.) But back in the day, it was pretty much innocent.

Constance Ford is on hand as Sylvia, to turn in her patented "kicked puppy" performance. If you pay attention, you can almost imagine her saying "Yes, Uncle Simon". The most disturbing thing by the end is the thought that young Miles will remain in her care.

One of my favorite things watching Perry Mason reruns is the chance to see Denver Pyle before he locked into his trademark "country" personna so familiar from the likes of "Dukes of Hazard" or "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams". Here he's a businessman, with nothing particular of the "rural" stereotype about him.

One oddity is Russ Conway as the Deputy. Conway was ubiquitous in roles as police officers, sheriffs, businessmen (honest or conniving) and other authority figures. He's fine here as well, but unlike most appearances his character isn't really important to the plot. He's just a Deputy - never a suspect, major witness or anything else. Very strange for Conway.

In general, Men Into Space was head and shoulders above the rest of the 1950's run of TV sci-fi. Riddled with what are now known to be scientific inaccuracies, the show nonetheless generally did better than the usual stories of caped space-princesses, malevolent dictators and blaster-wielding heroes in tights. But in this episode, they fell straight on their collective 50's faces, with a story that is absolutely dismissive of its protagonist. Renza Hales (Nancy Gates) is sent to the moon with less than a day of warning or preparation, along with her astronaut husband Major Joe Hales (H. M. Wynant) on a 90 day mission to (wait for it) cook and clean for her husband. Yep - they literally send her there as a "Moon Maid". The story is riddled with stereotypes and tropes too numerous to list here. Let's just say - SPOILER WARNING - that she finally proves her value to the expedition by producing a cake. One doubts that this outing is something writer James Clavell (Shogun, Noble House, King Rat, Tai Pan) featured prominently on his resume.

I was disappointed with this effort for what may be an odd reason. It isn't that the stories were bad.. But the presentation was static and overly talky.

The thing which made B5 great in my estimation was a combination of well written, compelling ideas with a DYNAMIC presentation. The series presented us with Babylon 5, inhabited by "a quarter million beings." It is against that backdrop that the marvelous characters and dialogue were set. We believed these people were moving the course of the galaxy, because the backdrop helped sell it.

In contrast, Lost Tales shows us settings that are virtually empty. That can work, such as in the series episode where Sheridan was isolated and interrogated at great length - but only because it was in CONTRAST to everything that had gone before.

When Tracy Scoggins as Col Lockley (who I actually always liked, BTW) explains what she has figured out in the first story, it just goes on, and feels like J. Michael Straczynski is simply belaboring the point. Similarly, in the conversations between Sheridan and Galen, there is just no sense of urgency. We know far in advance what decision Sheridan will have to make.

Overall, I'm glad I saw this, but not glad I paid as much for it as I did. Fans should probably see it, but newcomers should absolutely not judge the series from this entry.

That Terminator-like metal skull with the pointy teeth and glowing red eye has absolutely nothing to do with this movie. That was obviously just some ad executive's attempt to play on the popularity of "Ahnold's" film successes. Ditto for the tag line "The future is not friendly." Instead, "Prototype" is a thoughtful, well played drama about two character's struggles to understand and deal with the world around them. Christopher Plummer is on solid ground as the scientist who wants his creation to have a chance at life, and David Morse is spectacularly understated as the android prototype of the title.

What makes this so compelling is the same thing that makes all of the best science fiction or fantasy work: The principle players take the situation and their part in it as real, without engaging in histrionics. As Michael, Morse indulges in neither the overplayed "childlike wonder" nor the hyper-mechanical stiffness so often poured into similar roles by lesser actors. Michael is "other" without being weird.

Well worth a look.

I won't argue the point of whether "hardcore fans" will love/hate this film versions. I can only say that, having watched the TV adaptation first, and later having read the books with great glee, I was disappointed in what was for me a lackluster filming with dis-spirited acting. (Having never heard the radio version, I cannot comment there.)

A few comparisons come to me right off. The TV version caught me early on with the earnestness the actors gave to phrases such as "What would you say if I was to tell you..." or, "This must be Thursday. I never could...". The book caught me with Adams' visualizations such as the Vogon constructor ships hanging in the air "in precisely the fashion that bricks don't." The stars of this film throw lines like that away without any real care, and the readings from the book are too few and far between to much carry the load.

The revisions to the story did not much trouble me. It's obvious that a story told in books, radio, TV and movies cannot carry exactly the same elements and still make sense. The only revision that did bother me was the way they changed the Trillian/Artthur relationship, but that only because it was weakly written and even more weakly acted.

Character by character:

TV-Arthur was hilariously befuddled and wallowing out of his depth from crisis to crisis. Movie-Arthur seemed merely grouchy and put-upon.

TV-Ford came across as a traveler convinced of his own sophistication and trying to bring along his ape friend. Movie-Ford just didn't seem to be there most of the time.

TV-Trillian was slightly ditsy but ultimately a powerful brain. Movie-Trillian never convinced me she would have ACTUALLY run off to the other side of the Earth, let alone off-world with...

TV-Zaphod got several million points for cool, without ever really being mean-spirited. Movie-Zaphod just comes off as a brainless jerk.

The new character played by John Malcovitch (the name eludes me at the moment) has no TV counterpart. But JM plays him with all the comic genius of Cyrus The Virus. The bit with the glasses COULD have been funny if it was just done in passing. Instead, it was handled with all the "now watch this carefully" subtlety of a 10 year old with a new magic set.

Movie-Marvin was OK - great voice casting. Unfortunately, they didn't give him *enough* dialog, and the physical design makes it difficult to emphasize his dejected slump. It looks more as if the size of the headpiece is tipping the actor over than that the Android is having trouble coping with "life".

The Vogons - THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE FILM! Not only were the Vogons technically more advanced than in the TV version (the passage of time and application of technology could hardly do less), they get much better dialog and a lot more screen time. They are the *only* characters in the film that REALLY carry forward Adams "theatre of the absurd" touch. ("He's got a TOWEL!")

Overall, the film was competent and not BAD - it just lacked the "spark" for which I would have hoped. Perhaps those who worked on the film can be convinced to take the first spaceship to the new world, so that they can set up the hair-salons, create the marketing plans and sanitize the phones before the rest of us get there.

As much as I like John Larroquette, I found this "mystery" a little hard to watch, mainly for what it didn't deliver - John Larroquette. He is playing it so low-key in this un-puzzling story that I was afraid he had fallen asleep.

Also, I must have watched too much "Law & Order" over the years, because I found myself wanting to leap up and cry "objection" in the courtroom scenes. From Perry Mason to Ben Matlock, TV attorneys have almost always bent the rules of the court by revealing facts in their "questions" that no judge would ever allow in a real trial. But even the staid and stoic Owen Marshall did it with more vigor than Larroquette's somnambulent McBride (no first name given).

The charge for this one: Dullness in the first degree.

Tripping across location shoots is not that unusual in Los Angeles, where I lived and worked when this movie was produced. But this was one of the stranger instances. I and several others left our office building for lunch, only to be confronted with plain white newspaper boxes labeled "OBEY" where "USA Today" boxes normally stood, and posters exhorting us "Don't Question Authority".

Didn't realize that it was a location shoot right away - this was where they shot the convenience store scene, and everyone was inside trailers or in the building at the moment.

But, when "They Live" came out in theatres, and I finally understood what I had seen that day, I REALLY had an appreciation for what Roddy Piper's character went through. The messages are far more subtle in real life, but we DO get programmed. I just wish it were as innocuos a message as "crass commercialism".

I have seen many fine and many not-so-fine adaptations of Dickens' masterwork, from Alistair Sim to Mr. Magoo, but this is the only one where I BELIEVED Scrooge. The dialogue has been etched into our collective consciousness so long and so often across the years that it is virtually impossible to say "Bah! Humbug!" without it echoing every ham actor for a half century. (Try it!) But when Scott recites the signature phrases they are not just lines but a heartfelt expression. He brings a miserly old man to life on the screen, rather than the caricature of a miser. I would not want to be the charity collector standing before him or the negotiator on the exchange trading floor. And when he repents, I'm not sure how genuinely he HAS repented. There's that element in his voice and manner which speaks of a man desperately WANTING to change his ways, but not certain if he can really do so.

Ever have the feeling that you are the only one in the world who saw something? And everywhere you look to verify what you saw, there's nothing? So it was for years with "Another Nice Mess". If I didn't already have plenty of other reasons to doubt my own sanity, trying to find anything on this little film would have been a BIG reason. Rich Little and Herb Voland (probably best remebered today as General Clayton in the early run of M*A*S*H) do Nixon and Agnew as Laurel and Hardy. Need we say a lot more? Probably not. But give it a look if you ever run across it. This one truly belongs in the "What were they thinking" Hall of Fame.

And thus we approach the wrap-up for another Ellery Queen mystery. This direct audience involvement was just one of the great touches in this all-to-brief series. "You have all the clues..." Well - yes and no. For example, it might have helped to know that, in 1940's Manhattan, telephone numbers were 6 digits long, not the 7 digits we knew in the 70's, so the victim was REALLY dialing...(I won't give it away). OTOH, I had to stop reading TV Guide when I watched this show. This was back in the days when TV Guide had to stretch to fill pages, so they not only gave story synopses, they printed Guest Cast lists for network series. But unfortunately it seemed that The Killer was always listed first in the Guest Cast (or second if the victim was first.) And that was a clue that even dear Ellery lacked!

I only saw one or two episodes of this short-lived series, but based on what I saw, I must wonder if the producers intended an American version of the British series "Black Adder". Certainly there seem to be some parallels, especially with the third Black Adder series, set during the reign of Mad King George. The conniving and scheming Mr. Pfeiffer seems awfully much like Mr. Blackadder, while Pfeiffer's man Nibblet and Blackadder's man Baldric share much in common.

What they did not share, unfortunately, was a deeply embedded sense of wit. The buffoonery surrounding Pfeiffer was played far too broadly to remain funny for very long. The most effective clowns are generally those who do not seem to realize their own clownishness. Dann Florek (much better known for roles like that he played in Law and Order) seems to be playing buffoon to a mirror.

I had never read any of the Nero Wolfe books before this series aired. I was drawn to it because I like William Conrad. How fortunate that I saw this and thus found the books!

After reading a number of the novels, I was struck by a couple of things:

First, the old brownstone was perfectly reproduced. Author Rex Stout made you feel you were really in that building when he wrote the novels, and the set designer followed suit.

Second, the casting was a mixed bag. Conrad was an acceptable, though obviously softened, Wolfe. The characterizations of Fritz and Horstman were very well done, if mostly background. But Lee Horsley was badly out of place as Archie, as were the choices for Saul Panzer and Inspector Cramer.

Several years later I saw the movie version with Thayer David and was very pleased. He would have been a letter perfect Wolfe.

If you get the chance, by all means see this movie, but try to leave your preconceptions aside.

Before this movie came out, it was roundly denounced by people who misunderstood what it is about. The story is not, as many feared, about a dog trained to attack black people. It is the story of a man (Paul Winfield) and his determination to do something that everyone says cannot be done - FREE the dog of its programming. Unfortunately, it seems that too few people were able to break THEIR programming and give this movie a chance.

I watched this expecting the worst, and was actually mildly pleased. This movie is certainly an improvement over the 1981 disaster Legend of The Lone Ranger. My biggest disappointment was that the lead, though competent, is just too young to carry the role. On the other hand, he's perfect for WB's target audience, the young adult crowd. And of course, this film has "Pilot" written all over it.

That said, there were some changes I didn't quite get. Like, why did they change the Lone Ranger's name? "John Reed" becomes "Luke Hartman"? And where are the silver bullets? I mean, come on!

Oh - and who knew that 19th century Apache women were so skilled in the use of eyebrow pencils, eyeshadow, foundation and lip liner? History lessons can be fun, I guess.

In the last few hours of this seemingly interminable story, Dr. Chet Wakeman (Matt Frewer) tell Mary Crawford (Heather Donahue) that if she is looking for answers the aliens are going to disappoint her, big time. Now, if only Spielberg, Bohem and company had chosen to put that little warning in hour ONE of the 20 hours that this story dragged on, I wouldn't feel quite so cheated.

Let's talk about some specifics:

The Aliens: They made a HUGE deal in the "making of" special about how new and unique the aliens would be. They carefully masked them out because "you haven't seen anything like them." Haven't seen anything like them? Well, if so you haven't seen a single keychain fob or rear view mirror hanger in 20 years.

Eric Close ("John") : After watching him stumble around in "Dark Skies" as a confused alien-hunter who showed up in random places and did dumb things that made no sense, what a relief to see him - no - wait. Now he's an ALIEN stumbling around, showing up in random places and doing dumb things that make no sense. What does he know about people in Hollywood? What hold does he have that he keeps getting work, when he has all the charisma of a paving stone?

Limits of Power: If the aliens have such power to show up and abduct people without a trace from the middle of miltary bases, cities and other assorted locations - um - why are we seeing them *AT ALL*?

Deus Ex Kid: An alien/human hybrid with fantastic mental powers that appear just in the nick of time and solve each thorny problem! Wow! What a concept! (Mr's Spielberg and Bohem - did you miss 'V'?)

Evil Government Functionaries: Yawn... Let's face it - to believe in decades long government conspiracies, you have to believe that government service attracts really bright people in enough quantity to pull it off. (But at least they postulated a single family - the Crawfords - psychopathic enough to try.)

Evil General: Thank you General Beers (James McDaniel) for doing what I've secretly wanted to do since the days of Max Headroom.

If you want a more *thoughtful* treatment of UFO's and abductions, go rent "Official Denial".

To say that this attempt to bring famed chef Emeril Lagasse to the sitcom world is bad would be understating the case. The unfortunate thing for Mr. Lagasse is that, despite what many will say, it simply isn't HIS fault. If you can stand to sit through one of these excruciating half hours, you may notice that Emeril himself is not all that bad. He's amateurish, and not nearly as fluid with his delivery of scripted lines as he is with the open banter of his actual cooking shows. But he's actually the best one of the bunch of "clowns" in this incomprehensible mess. The problem appears to be that the producers were afraid of Emeril's lack of polish and simply tried to cover it up by supplying a bevy of loud, obnoxious old-hat stereotypes to run around screaming. Mr. Lagasse could probably have done much better with some subtlety in the writing. Perhaps if the producers had modeled their product on the British comedy "Chef!", it might have suited better. Sorry Emeril, a chef is only as good as his ingredients, and the producers handed you spoiled ham to work with.