SURE-FIRE ADVICE TO SAVE SLIPPING NETWORKS : With Such Tantalizing Series as 'Goldfinger's Girls' and 'Miami Mice,' TV Season Could Be Rescued - Los Angeles Times
Advertisement

SURE-FIRE ADVICE TO SAVE SLIPPING NETWORKS : With Such Tantalizing Series as ‘Goldfinger’s Girls’ and ‘Miami Mice,’ TV Season Could Be Rescued

Share via

All right! This is it!

You’ve seen the new TV season, and you know the networks--particularly slipping CBS and sliding ABC--need help. So I’m going to give them one last chance to follow my suggestions for new series. I can’t keep on doing this forever. My patience is wearing thin. This time my advice is free. Next time I’m charging plenty. Understand?

And now get ready for. . . .

--â€Miami Mice.†Adventure series. Hip small mice in teeny, trendy pastel clothes scurry to rock music and terrify drug dealers, making them stand on tables and scream.

--â€Very Ordinary Stories.†Science-fiction anthology. These stories are so usual, predictable and unsuspenseful that there is no need to watch them, which makes them all the more intriguing and irresistible.

Advertisement

--â€Lady Flue.†Crime-adventure series. A gorgeous female chimney sweep fearlessly apprehends top criminals by sliding down their chimneys and pelting them with ashes.

--â€Little Black Rambo.†Cute, issue-oriented comedy. A small black kid is adopted by a white, middle-class mercenary couple and sent on military missions to destroy Communists in Southeast Asia.

--â€I Dream of Dr. Ruth Westheimer.†Hilarious comedy. An Air Force officer is driven bananas by wee sex therapist who emerges from her bottle only to appear on TV talk shows, make condom commercials and giggle.

Advertisement

--â€Toms for the Tummy.†Spy thriller. Tom Snyder, Tom Lasorda and Tommy Tune are diet doctors by day and secret agents by night.

--â€Bolshoi Bums.†Outrageous black comedy. Two zany Soviet dancers--these guys are such schnooks that you wouldn’t believe it--cause such havoc that they are evicted from their half-room Moscow flat and exiled to Murmansk, where they cause such a stir that they are put into an insane asylum, where they short-sheet the doctors, resulting in their execution. Possible spinoff series: “The Ghosts of Bolshoi Bums.†Possible blockbuster movie of the week, scheduled during ratings sweeps: “The Ghosts of Bolshoi Bums Meet Little Black Rambo.â€

--â€Turner’s Burners.†Adventure series. A broadcast mogul recruits an elite team of demolition experts to destroy TV networks that he is unable to acquire through legal means.

Advertisement

--â€Goldfinger’s Girls.†Comedy adventure. An old James Bond nemesis resurfaces in Miami, where he operates a shady retirement home for elderly female foreign agents and is beaten to a pulp by Maude.

--â€The Crosby Show.†Family comedy. Bob Crosby, Annette Crosby, Mary Crosby, Norm Crosby and Crosby, Stills and Nash live in the same house and don’t get along. But their music video for the poor and starving (“Crosby Aidâ€) makes them a hit with the MTV set.

--â€Itzhak: For Hire.†Crime series. The great Itzhak Perlman is a private eye who wears a black stocking cap.

--â€The Scarecrow and King Hussein.†Spy thriller. The Jordanian leader becomes a secret agent for William Morris and takes meetings with studio executives.

--â€Two’s a Crowd.†Comedy adventure. Siamese twins--joined at the head--apprehend international criminals, who then laugh at them.

--â€Why?†Reality-based science fiction. A network TV executive can think of no good reason to watch his own network.

Advertisement

--â€Wheel of Tongues.†Action-packed game show featuring a cute twist. In this more exciting version of “Wheel of Fortune,†contestants have their tongues glued to the wheel before spinning.

--â€Odd Guy.†Science fiction. A mysterious man who is understood by no one raises squash by day, plays squash by night and then is squashed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

--â€That Goy.†Real cute comedy. Marlo Thomas returns as a house mother for a Jewish college fraternity.

--â€Joyce on Joyce.†Unique public affairs series. Each week Dr. Joyce Brothers makes baffling and irrelevant observations about the sex life of James Joyce.

--â€Dumb People.†Exciting new series from George Schlatter. Each week several slow-witted individuals are asked difficult questions that they are unable to answer. Then they are ridiculed by a sadistic studio audience.

--â€Wild and Kinky Kingdom.†Extraordinarily bold nature series. Buxom beauties romp through the forest and are tranquilized and tagged by Marlin Perkins.

Advertisement

--â€Don Knotts Landing.†Soap-opera spinoff. Donna Mills runs off with Don Knotts and is immediately sorry.

--â€Dr. Ruth Westheimer Presents.†Bold and brash reality series to be possible mid-season replacement for “I Dream of Dr. Ruth Westheimer.†Series of half-hours in which Dr. Ruth hosts unusually short, silly people, and she and her guests do nothing but sit and giggle at each other. (This may not work.)

Advertisement