U N I V E R S I T Y D A I L Y K A N S A N
Monday, August 18, 1997
3D
Classic humor returns to TV
CBS welcomes Newhart back to nighttime
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — We don't mean to overstate this, but we can't escape the feeling all is right with the TV world: Bob Newhart is coming back.
After The Bob Newhart Show in the 1970s, Newhart in the '80s and the short-lived Bob, the comedian is paired with Judd Hirsch as odd couple in laws in George & Leo, debuting this fall on CBS.
"I was playing golf three times a week, and I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life," Newhart said.
"I missed the creative process of going in on a Monday, and you have a script that's really good but not quite there. Tuesday's a little better, Wednesday's a little better. Then you do it before a live audience and it works, and it's the high of highs.
"It's what it's all about," he said. In George & Leo, to air 9:30 p.m. EDT Mondays, Newhart plays a widowed bookstore owner living on Martha's Vineyard. Hirsch is Leo, a rascal who blows into town as his daughter is about to marry George's son.
After the misbegotten Bob of 1992-93, which took Newhart out of character and made him brassier, the new series is a return to form.
been part of television for so long with good reason.
He and the medium are well-suited.
Like a towering comedian of the past, Jack Benny, Newhart's tiny tics are perfect for the small screen. So is his timing; like Benny, he is a master of the
pause that amuses.
In a scene from his news s it c o m , Newhart tries to convince a hitman that he's not Vegas bagman Leo, who's skipped town with his bosses' money.
"OK, we'll play it that way. You're not Leo, and I'm not a mob assassin," says the gunman.
The comedian, a youthful-looking 67 with only a slight pauch, makes comic hay of seeming so very average.
Mr. Carlin?"
A beat, then another. Then Newhart's reply: "Uh, good."
Unlike Benny, whose comic persona included vain superiority, Newhart is Everyman, reacting with cautious politeness to the crackpots and bullies that life insists on tossing his way.
Here's a typical encounter between the psychologist he played on The Bob Newhart Show and perennial patient Elliot Carlin (Jack Riley), as recounted by Newhart:
"Men think they were in the service with me, and women think I was their first husband," he said. "People will come up and
"How was your weekend, Mr. Carlin?"
"On Sunday, I was possessed by the devil."
Bob Newhart actor
say 'Where the hell is the check ... Oh, I thought you were someone else.'"
albums, was never so hip that he risked becoming uncool.
It is classic humor that has allowed Newhart to keep striking our funny bone.
The former accountant,
the man with
"the button-down mind",
as he billed himself on '60s comedy
His trademark was phone conversation bits, like Sir Walter Raleigh's boss questioning him from England about the discovery of tobacco: "You stick it between your lips. Then what do you do with it, Walt? You set fire to it?"
Newhart's only gimmick seems to be his measured delivery — and he contends that's not really artifice.
"People say 'Is that your natural way of talking?' Well, I didn't look at the comedy scene and say, 'Wait a minute, nobody's doing a stammer.'"
On occasion, he's had to protect
his rhythm from the tone deaf.
"On The Bob Newhart Show, it was early in the first year and one of the shows was running a little long. A producer said 'Could you kind of run some of those speeches together? It would really help us on time.'
Newhart understands that timelessness is key to his appeal, and he resisted topical humor in his '70s sitcom.
"And I said 'Look, this stammer has given me a home in Beverly Hills and I'm not about to change it. So you'd better take out some words."
"They'd put in a Gerald Ford joke and I'd say 'Guys, people are gonna be watching this 20 years from now and that's really gonna look dumb.' So we never got terribly topical; it was character-driven, not joke-driven."
And people are, indeed, watching his old shows.
Newhart said he was pleased that he's found a new audience, including children, through reruns on the Nickelodeon cable channel.
Though today's sitcoms have changed, with pressure for raucous lines and sexy scenes, Newhart doesn't expect those to be part of George & Leo.
"That isn't the kind of show I like to do. And I don't think that's the only kind of show that can be successful," he said.
"I think we can go a little further than we have in the past, but not like some of the shows I've seen. They're more shock than they are funny."
After 25 years on television, Newhart knows better. In September, he'll find out if audiences do, too.
Reruns, tempers burn audiences
Summer viewing down 11 percent
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Watch it! This summer in the television world, emotions run as hot as the weather.
Hong Kong was boiling a month ago. But NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw reportedly was even more steamed when the network cut him short after just three minutes on the air.
His rivals at ABC and CBS continued live coverage as Britain handed over Hong Kong to China. Meanwhile, NBC handed over Brokaw's airtime to sports so it could cover tennis.
A Miller Brewing Co. executive was angry about getting fired for describing a racy episode of Seinfeld to a female co-worker. Then when Jerold Mackenzie took his former employer and colleague to court, a Milwaukee jury got angry for him. They awarded him $26.6 million.
CNN president Tom Johnson confessed he hit the ceiling when one of his network's correspondents, Jonathan Karl, turned shill for a credit card company in a magazine ad.
And Kathie Lee Gifford is probably still pretty sore at husband Frank, just as sure as they both are still seething at the supermarket tabloid that published photos of the football Hall of Famer getting sporty with a buxom blonde in a Manhattan hotel suite.
But they're not the only angry one around.
The Catholic League is plenty hot under the collar, clerical and otherwise, as it appeals to ABC to banish an upcoming series from the network's fall lineup.
Nothing
tion of NBC's Friends.
ABC has other things to sweat about, of course.
Like summers before,the networks are just fiddling.
Sacred stars Kevin Anderson as a young priest ministering to a rowdy urban parish. ABC calls Father Ray "witty, audacious, sexy, and first, and foremost, a man."
That translates into a negative portrait of the priesthood for the 350,000-member Catholic anti-defamation group, despite the view of others who have seen the pilot as one of the best new dramas of the upcoming season.
Right now, the network is trying to drum up excitement for its fall schedule while its hottest show, a real-life melodrama spinning out of control, upstages its new schedule and everything else.
But does it have a prayer? ABC's faith in Nothing Sacred will soon be put to the ultimate test, and not just by censorious Catholics. The series faces the merciless competi-
Jamie Tarses stars as herself in Jamie Learns Her ABCs, the saga of a young, beautiful TV programmer who finds herself in over her head as the first woman to head a network's entertainment division.
"The truth is very complex," Ted Harbert, Tarses' predecessor, recently told the New York Times Magazine.
Are the men at the network trying to derail poor Jamie? Or, after 14 stormy months during which she has reportedly antagonized her bosses along with some of the industry's most powerful producers, could her problem with the job be. sav. inertitude?
But speaking of Hollywood, he added more simply, "The town hates her, and I'm not sure even
hits will fix that."
Even so, last week Tarses declared, she was staying at ABC.
Meaning her rapt audience will have to wait a little longer for the series conclusion.
Which raises another question:
How would such a series, if it really were a series, be rated for violence,
sex and language?
That's an issue that gets everyone fuming, from politicians to programmers to parents. The age-based ratings plan introduced early this year pleased no one.
Now a souped-up parental advisory will add the content-oriented letters "V," "S" and "L," as well as "D" for suggestive dialogue, to gauge prime-time broadcast fare.
Except on NBC, which has heatedly refused to participate in the revamped system. It could lead to censorship, the network warns.
A recent study by the Bozell advertising agency found that television usage is about 11 percent lower in summer than in fall — but that broadcast networks' ratings plunge by more than 25 percent.
The clear message is that the audience is rejecting their plethora of summer reruns.
Like summers before, the networks are just fiddling - while their hot and bothered audience burns.
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