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31 FRIDAY CAPITAL CRITTERS (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.; also Feb. 1, 8-8:30 p.m.) With Steven Bochco's name attached to this cartoon show as ''executive consultant,'' we'd expect something smart, savvy, sharp; instead, Capitol Critters is soft, silly, and sentimental. Critters follows the story of a young Midwestern mouse named Max who moves to Washington, D.C., to live with his cousins and other mice, rats, and roaches underneath the White House. The creature heroes regularly scurry up into the Presidential home to observe the nation's leaders, who are always shown from the waist down-presumably a mouse's point of view. Neil Patrick Harris, the star of Bochco's Doogie Howser, M.D., provides Max's voice, and Critters is an awkward mixture of cartoon slapstick and political satire. Shaped by Bochco and executive producer-writer Nat Mauldin, this series' idea of a cutting joke is to show our representatives sitting around in the Senate reading comic books and girlie magazines instead of listening to their colleagues' filibustering. The animation, from the Hanna-Barbera studios, is fair-the figures move more realistically than on your average cheapie Saturday-morning cartoon show, but the drawing is unimaginative-the willful primitivism of Matt Groening's characters in The Simpsons is more interesting than the blandly accomplished illustrations here. And Groening gets some artistic friction going by contrasting simple drawings with shrewd, sophisticated scripts; by contrast, the words in Critters are merely as dully proficient as the pictures. C
BILLY (ABC, 9:30-10 p.m.) Scottish stand-up comic Billy Connolly was brought in to replace Howard Hesseman in Head of the Class during that dreadful sitcom's numbing final days last year, and now this lively comic actor has been rewarded with his own series. Connolly stars as Billy MacGregor, a visiting Scottish teacher in Berkeley, Calif., whose green card has expired. Over the show's interminable opening credits, we're told that Billy and one of his students-Mary (Marie Marshall), a single mom with three children-recently got married. They're not in love; they did it so that Billy could avoid being deported. Now Billy sleeps in a basement apartment in Mary's house, and inevitably gets involved in raising her kids. Billy thus combines aspects of Who's the Boss?, the movie Green Card, and William Schallert's boarder-in-the-basement character on The Torkelsons-all to no avail. Billy-mostly a collection of sitcom-kid jokes-is resolutely unfunny despite the best efforts of its wild-eyed, manic star. Having recognized Connolly's talent, ABC is now letting him twist in the laugh-track wind. D
2 SUNDAY
GROWING UP IN THE AGE OF AIDS: AN ABC NEWS TOWN MEEETING FOR THE FAMILY-WITH PETER JENNINGS (ABC, 6:30-8 p.m.) AIDS experts discuss prevention and protection and talk about progress for a cure.''remember the time'' (Fox, approximately 8:25-8:30 p.m.) The premiere of a new Michael Jackson video, this one directed by John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood). Follows In Living Color.
