Home
New Series Steven Bochco's 1991-93 divorce-lawyer drama Civil Wars never quite caught on, but its cast keeps popping up all over the tube. Last season, Mariel Hemingway locked lips with Roseanne, Peter Onorati flopped on the ABC sitcom Joe's Life, and Alan Rosenberg and Debi Mazar temporarily relocated their Civil Wars characters to L.A. Law. Now that her McKenzie, Brackman firm has closed up shop, Mazar reemerges as host of Musical Shorts (Comedy Central, July 31, 10-10:30 p.m.), a compendium of tuneful comic skits. And there are still more Wars vets making comebacks this fall: David Marciano plays a cop in CBS' new series Due South, and Peter Onorati has yet another new show, CBS' Under Suspicion. Three series in three seasons-who does Onorati think he is, Robert Urich? Movies Contrary to its porno-esque title, The Whipping Boy (Disney, July 31, 7-9 p.m.) is the Mark Twainesque tale of an adorable, Oliver Twistish urchin (Truan Munro) forced to become the spanking-time stand-in for an incorrigible, Andrew Giuliani-ish prince (Nic Knight). Based on Sid Fleischman's Newbery award-winning 1986 novella, the movie provides rousing, family-friendly entertainment. The high point: special guest star George C. Scott's gleefully hammy performance as Blind George, a grimy sporting-club proprietor prone to barking, ''Get me some more rats!'' Sure, it's a step down from Patton, but it beats starring with Dan Cortese in CBS' defunct Traps.
While The X-Files is in reruns, UFO fans seeking intelligent life on other channels need look no further than Roswell (Showtime, July 31, 8-10 p.m.), a fact-based dramatization of a 1947 flying-saucer incident in New Mexico. Weirdo par excellence Kyle MacLachlan stars as as a military man caught up in the government's cover-up, and country-rocker Dwight Yoakam proves his acting chops as the owner of the ranch where the alien craft crash-lands. (Yoakam even removes his hat in one scene and exposes his nearly bald pate!) Martin Sheen mars the film with an over-the-top turn as a Deep Throat-like figure who talks MacLachlan's ear off in an airplane hangar, but Roswell, penned by playwright Arthur Kopit (Indians) and directed by Jeremy Kagan (The Journey of Natty Gann), builds a surprisingly convincing case for the existence of little green men.
Pilots It doesn't star singer Whitney Houston, but Bodyguards (ABC, July 30, 8-9 p.m.) does feature House Party rappers Kid 'N Play as a pair of Brooklyn homeboys hired to protect a mobster's repo-woman fiancee. Playing to the stars' strengths, the show emphasizes comedy over crime drama, yet ABC still didn't see fit to put it on the fall schedule. The network also didn't pick up I'm The Man (ABC, July 30, 9-9:30 p.m.), starring the immensely appealing stand-up comic Dave Chappelle as a Washington, D.C., teenager trying to persuade his widowed mother to give him more responsibility around the house (''I'm not a baby, Mommy!'' he pouts at one point). Why ABC continues to renew crappy shows like Family Matters and Full House while passing on these two promising programs is beyond me.
