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Boogie Fever
Don't expect to see the same old song and dance on the 100th
episode of That '70s Show. Producers of the Fox Me-Decade comedy
plan to mark the occasion this April by creating a full-on
musical episode. ''It's really not too much of a departure for us
because we've had a lot of musical fantasies and choreographed
numbers in the past,'' says '70s exec producer Jackie Filgo, who
believes there's ample room for a different take on the genre
beyond the recent offerings from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
The Drew Carey Show. The '70s riff will take us inside the brain
of Fez (Wilmer Valderrama) just before his performance in the
school's Spring Sing concert. The Who's Roger Daltrey will
guest-star as an overbearing music teacher, and there'll be
revamped covers of retro classics, including ''Love Hurts'' and
''Happy Together.'' Does that mean all of the actors will be
showing off their vocal range? ''They're a really game
cast -- they'll do anything,'' assures Jeff Filgo, Jackie's husband
and fellow exec producer. ''If we have some cast members that
aren't comfortable singing, we'll figure out a way to dub
them.... But we'll make a joke out of it and own [up to] it,
instead of trying to trick people.''
Ground Zero-ing In
CBS and HBO are about to put America's desire for ''comfort food''
programming on hold by offering reminders of why we longed for
such light entertainment in the first place. Both nets have Sept.
11 documentaries planned, for March (CBS) and May (HBO), and the
Eye is in the early stages of developing a telefilm about Flight
93 from Newark (which crashed in a Pennsylvania field during the
attacks). The docs were shot by folks who were in the wrong place
at the right time: The HBO special will feature nearly an hour of
amateur video from Ground Zero and include narration by former
New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani; the CBS project contains raw
footage from French filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet, who were
in New York to shoot a documentary about firefighters but wound
up capturing rare plane-impact shots and scenes of the North
Tower evacuation. CBS briefly debated whether viewers wanted to
see more devastation footage from New York, but ultimately found
the doc too powerful to keep under wraps. ''If somebody came to
you [with] a roll of film from the battle of Normandy that showed
incredible courage and determination, wouldn't you want to share
that?'' says CBS News' Susan Zirinsky, who will exec-produce the
project. ''This material is riveting, it's moving, it's important,
but it's not graphic.''
Alphabet Soup
First, the bad news: ABC picked up According to Jim, starring Jim
Belushi, for next season. Now the really bad news: The far more
worthy Once and Again may not be so lucky. ABC will relaunch the
Sela Ward drama on March 4 in its old 10 p.m. Monday time
slot -- its fifth since debuting in 1999 -- but creator Marshall
Herskovitz is not feeling hopeful about a season 4 with the
Manning-Sammler clan. ''I don't think the show is necessarily on
its last legs, but the reality [is], the show has lost its
audience considerably by being on Friday nights. It would take
some kind of remarkable turn of events for people to find us on
Mondays.'' At least he's not alone in his suffering. Other
critical faves, like ABC's The Job and Fox's 24 and Undeclared,
remain in limbo (of the four shows, 24 attracts the most viewers,
with a lackluster 8.7 million). As for the status of O&A -- which
averages only 6.3 million -- Herskovitz is trying to be the bigger
man by not blaming ABC. ''It's not that the network executives
don't care about quality,'' he reasons, ''they just understand that
quality is not a guarantor of ratings.''
