Instead, the fourth season will explore the characters' personal lives. Wambaugh (Fyvush Finkel) gets kicked out by his wife. Jill (Kathy Baker) gets an abrasive new physician partner (Brooklyn Bridge's Amy Aquino). And Lauren Holly (Dumb and Dumber) gets more screen time as Officer Max, though her affair with Kenny (Costas Mandylor) will mercifully flicker out. There'll still be a few oddball touches: In one episode, Max will accidentally shoot a man dressed as a bratwurst. In another, Sheriff Brock (Tom Skerritt) will need medical attention after he and Jill try sex in the backseat of their car, and he gets his, uh, bratwurst caught in his fly.
Ultimately, though, these shows may be topped in the ratings by the most inexplicable Friday-night phenomenon of all: Urkel.
--Bret Watson
NEW SHOWS DWEEBS
CBS, 8-8:30 p.m. (starts Sept. 22) CONCEPT: Male computer geeks humanized by female computer illiterate. You've heard of Windows 95? Jack into Friends 95! THE SCOOP: Newhart's Peter Scolari plays a Steve Wozniak-y computer genius who has trouble communicating with ordinary people--if you call Wings' comely Farrah Forke ordinary. She takes a job at Scolari's company, which crawls with megabitten eccentrics. Regarding the notion of dweebiness: "Maybe Sharon Stone never felt dweeby in her life, maybe the cheerleaders and the high school football players didn't, but everybody else has definitely felt that," says executive producer/creator Peter No ah. "One of the gratifying things about the pilot is that the audience was really identifying with these guys. I was anxious not to have them laughing at these guys--I wanted them to want to throw their arms around them." Oh, yes: One of the dweebs is Corey Feldman, in sunglasses and a goatee--the person in prime time least likely to have arms thrown around him. BOTTOM LINE: We'll wait for that non-dweeby Sharon Stone sitcom.
THE BONNIE HUNT SHOW
CBS, 8:30-9 p.m. (starts Sept. 22) CONCEPT: Smart, plucky, prickly Hunt as a TV reporter in a series mixing scripted and improvised material. THE SCOOP: Hunt, so good in the little-seen The Building, is back in another David Letterman-produced sitcom set in Chicago. "I love to improvise," she says, "so we thought, wouldn't it be great to do a nonscripted news piece where I go out in the field? So every week, whatever topic is the news story, you see me interviewing real people." As for her pal Letterman, Hunt says, "Poor Dave, I drag him into everything. He gets all the scripts and we go to him on every turn. His advice is, 'Before we decide, just think how your stomach is going to feel tomorrow.'" BOTTOM LINE: Probably the year's most creatively risky show. It has already claimed a casualty: producer-writer Rob Burnett (Late Show). Sincere good luck, Bonnie.
RETURNING SHOW
HOMICIDE: LIFE oN THE STREET (NBC, 10-11 p.m.) With Ned Beatty and Daniel Baldwin gone, Reed Diamond joins the precinct as arson detective Mike Driscoll, who executive producer Henry Bromell says "will hopefully bring a kind of levity and a kind of rough boyishness to the room that will be different." Executive producer Tom Fon tana calls Driscoll "a frat boy with a gun." Diamond (Clear and Present Danger) isn't crazy about that description. "I'm really pissed off! I'm gonna have to kick some butt!" he jokes. "My char acter is a working-class man, no frat boy, no college boy." While the series will try to explore all the characters in greater depth, the focus will remain on crime solving. "We're serious about avoiding soap opera, which is hard," says Brom ell. "The minute you put a man and a woman in a room together, you have potential soap opera."
