Why Is This Show Laughing?
Here's what America's Funniest Home Videos thought was funny on
March 11, the night it became the highest-rated series on TV:
*A child getting hit in the face with a snow shovel
*A child falling out of a swing
*A man falling out of a boat
*A child falling down a hill
*Seven women falling off a bench
*A man being hit by a glider
*Another man being hit by a glider
*A woman falling off a camel
*A child bicycling into a tree
*A child bicycling into a bush
The top prize went to a woman thrown by a horse. ''I'm walking fine
now,'' she told host Bob Saget, who, naturally, kept smiling.
Advancing Shadows
NBC's revival of the horror soap opera Dark Shadows will air next
fall with an all-new cast: Jean Simmons, horror-movie veteran an bara
Steele, and, as vampire Barnabas Collins (the role originally played
by Jonathan Frid), Chariots of Fire's Ben Cross.
Open Mouth, Insert Feet
Have ABC's Sunday-morning talking heads been studying at the Andy
Rooney School of Journalism? Hours before Rooney returned to 60
Minutes on March 4, a couple of pundits on This Week with David
Brinkley seemed bent on replacing him in the headlines. George Will,
discussing the Rooney affair, said AIDS is ''rooted largely in
irrational behavior'' and warned viewers about ''thought police roving
the lands'' and squelching free speech. Brinkley let the comment pass,
but at the end of the show, he jokingly suggested a way to kill off
the North Korean Army. The punch line: ''If we had five Communist
countries now, then we'd have four.'' Brinkley chuckled and signed
off. No other laughs were heard.
Son of WKRP
WKRP in Cincinnati, the CBS comedy about life at a low-rated radio
station that ran from 1978 to 1982, will return with new episodes
on local stations in September 1991. But viewers may not recognize
the show. So far, no one from the original cast, which included
Howard Hessessn, Loni Anderson, and Tim Reid, has signed to return.
