Now and Again

Two other characters help give Now its zing. Gerrit Graham's Roger Bender was Wiseman's insurance-company colleague and best buddy, despite the fact that he's a corporate weasel whose lack of scruples extends even to cheating Lisa out of a decent death settlement when the John Goodman-Wiseman dies. But it's a measure of how deft Caron's writing is that we come to see that Roger is less venal than hapless, and he soon becomes a sympathetic comic foil who stays involved in the Wisemans' lives.

Just as good is Dennis Haysbert as the Eric Close-Wiseman's government-appointed overseer, Dr. Theodore Morris. Required to frequently be cold and imperious — ''You are an experiment,'' he informs Wiseman, ''and I will tell you when and what you will do'' — Haysbert also conveys the enthusiastic curiosity that's the flip side of scientific concentration. He likes to test his Three Billion Dollar Man (the late-20th-century price tag for building a better Lee Majors) by daring him to try to outrun and outwit his government handlers; it amuses Dr. Morris to see how clever his ''science experiment'' can be.

The series' first story line — about an elderly Japanese man intent on blackmailing the government by threatening to nerve-gas Manhattan —— was at once suspenseful and whimsical. This doddering terrorist transported the deadly gas inside ordinary eggs, Caron's symbol for the fragility of life. By cutting back and forth between the terrorist's awful preliminary attacks (releasing just enough gas to leave everyone in a subway car writhing, dying with blood pouring from their mouths) and Wiseman's wistful, illicit attempts to contact his family, Now and Again managed to avoid both hyped-up melodrama and wet sentimentality.

Caron is a master of juxtaposition, and not just in matters of plot points. In interviews, he claims he thieved the show's basic premise from the musical Damn Yankees, and episodes frequently use show tunes such as West Side Story's ''Something's Coming'' as ironic mood music.

Although there's always the chance that Close and Colin could become as peevishly insufferable as the squabbling couple on Moonlighting did, right now the playful atmosphere of Now and Again provides a blissful kick unlike anything else in prime time. A