Rumors of `Homefront's' Demise Could Kill It Off
Newsday, 03-09-1993
Diane Werts
DEAD OR ALIVE - you know the game. Franco? Dead. Richard Nixon? Alive. Ernest Borgnine? Hmmm. (Still living, though.)
Now it gets tough.
"Brooklyn Bridge"? "Covington Cross"? "Homefront"? "I'll Fly Away"? "Sibs"?
And you thought people were tough to keep tabs on. Try figuring the status of today's now-you-see-'em TV shows. Hiatus has become a most popular place for series to while away the months these days.
Let's talk years. "Sibs" is Not Dead, believe it or not, an entire season later: Trade papers report it's yet being reworked by producers James L. Brooks and Heide Perlman, without stars Marsha Mason or Alex Rocco. "Covington Cross" will return, we're promised: Six of its 13 filmed episodes remain to be burned off - oops, seen. Expect lots of petrified programs to find their way to your set "on some muggy June night," in the words of one network wag, like cruelly persistent zombies that won't stay dead, dead, dead!
Of course, we don't always want these hiatus shows to be buried, either. "Brooklyn Bridge" has a strong (if small) following awaiting its 85th attempt at gathering an audience this spring. And "I'll Fly Away" partisans still hold slim hopes that this sterling hour might be renewed after running all its produced episodes this winter. Starting this weekend, "Reasonable Doubts" is back for a Saturday shot, along with "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles."
And "Homefront" gets another berth tonight, when it moves into the 10 p.m. Tuesday ABC slot vacated by "Civil Wars," which took over from "Going to Extremes," after "Jack's Place" usurped the time from "Homefront" last season.
Can't keep up?
Well, the "Homefront" producers think that's the point behind their second-year series' failure to catch fire. "This is not our third move, it's our fifth," says co-creator Bernard Lechowick. "No, it's actually our sixth," interrupts co-creator Lynn Marie Latham. "Tuesday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday," she counts over the phone from Hollywood, trying to get her days straight. If these folks can't, how can we? So this married couple is working the phones, talking up their show's return. Just don't compare the current status of "Homefront" to that of "I'll Fly Away" or any other endangered "quality" show.
"We're different from these other shows that people might lament or defend," Lechowick says, "because every time we've been left alone [in one time period], we've built the audience." Even against "Cheers" earlier this season, he boasts, "Homefront" managed to improve ABC's demographics in the 9 p.m. time period.
Until - poof! - the show disappeared last fall. Even ABC Entertainment president Ted Harbert admits "Homefront" was essentially sacrificed when ABC "saw an opportunity to win the November sweeps" for its affiliates; ABC pre-empted the mid-rated show so much that when it returned in December with a dynamite storyline about polio, even its fans weren't always around. "I think it is unfortunate, the air pattern for `Homefront,' " Harbert admitted at the midseason press tour - though it was his staff that constructed the unfortunate pattern.
It's even sadder because "Homefront" really does seem to have the stuff to grow beyond its core cult. It isn't oppressively heavy, as "I'll Fly Away" can be, or excludingly specific to one place and time, as some find "Brooklyn Bridge." It's a period piece, true, but its postwar setting frames issues that still haunt us 45 years later - racism, women's roles, class conflict, generational change, epidemic illness.
But those Big Questions are addressed in vividly human terms through the involving personal dramas of the ensemble cast. That may have made "Homefront" look initially like a soap opera when some viewers saw the pilot's emphasis on the complications of returning soldiers and their war brides. Those who stuck around found that wasn't the case - that, in fact, "Homefront" turned out to be a stylish hybrid, deftly dancing between social and cultural upheaval, romantic trials and surprisingly generous helpings of humor and irony. That light touch makes this serialized show all the more intimate and enjoyable.
In other words, "Homefront" smells like a hit. Which is another part of the problem. ABC execs initially loved the show and expected huge things from it. "We've been a victim, in a sense, of their affection for us," says Lechowick. "They loved the pilot so much, they gave us their best time slot" - the 10 p.m. Tuesday lead-out of the "Roseanne" hour - "and we couldn't hold that 28 share lead-in." But in the months since "Homefront" was yanked from that hour, neither have the other occupants, by and large. Yet ABC still expects more.
Those feelings are among what Lechowick calls "the historical accidents" that seem to have conspired to doom "Homefront" - overreaching expectations, the network's sweeps-month pre-emptions (and affiliates' election-year pre-emptions to sell local campaign time), and, perhaps scariest of all, the notion that some of ABC's other hour dramas are given a better shot for reasons other than their ratings promise. Lechowick notes that shows like "Jack's Place" and "The Commish" are from ABC Productions, and that "Civil Wars" is part of an ABC commitment to producer Steven Bochco. Until the ongoing revision of rules concerning the networks' financial interest in off-network syndication is resolved, "the networks don't have a great incentive in keeping on a marginally rated show that they don't share the foreign profits in."
But Lechowick and Latham think "Homefront" has broad enough appeal to succeed, if only the network would leave it in one place. Tonight's return episode - the first of seven running through April - is a gem, with several storylines dovetailing beautifully: the arrival home of independent polio victim Anne Metcalf (Wendy Phillips), the developing dalliance between businessman Mike Sloan (Ken Jenkins) and sharp barmaid Judy Owen (Kelly Rutherford), the entrepreneurial ambitions of domestics Gloria and Abe Davis (Hattie Winston and Dick Anthony Williams), and the continuing pratfalls of would-be radio star Ginger Szabo (Tammy Lauren).
Upcoming shows will tackle the arrival of television (next week), the suburban housing boom (March 23) and, later, the beginnings of the "red scare" and unexpected local ramifications of the European Holocaust. There'll still be romantic conniving and other shenanigans - that's the balance that makes "Homefront" so much fun.
The question is how long the show will be around for viewers to discover that. Programer Harbert said at the press tour that ABC is looking to see a fast ratings response to "Homefront" proportional to all the letters, faxes and phone calls - not to mention the Dear Abby campaign - demanding to see the show renewed. "If you're really that dedicated, if you love it that much," he warned viewers, "you've really got to show up."
That's if folks can even figure out that the rumors of "Homefront's" demise have been greatly exaggerated. Pretty soon we'll see whether they were truly premature - or unfortunately prescient.
Diane Werts, GLUED TO THE TUBE Rumors of `Homefront's' Demise Could Kill It Off. , Newsday, 03-09-1993, pp 71.