tuneinyesterday

TUNE IN YESTERDAY
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg;
Sep 21, 1991;
Janis D. Froelich

The networks went to the attic for three new programs this fall, dusting off nostalgic scenes of small-town America after World War II, immigrant-rich New York City in the '50s and the racially charged South of the '60s.

The blasts from the past are Homefront on ABC, CBS' Brooklyn Bridge and NBC's I'll Fly Away.

While these shows are set in the past, their themes are here and now. All three series deal with modern social issues played out in front of old-time backdrops.

Stepping back in time gives writers a safe distance to tell controversial stories that might not make it on a network's schedule today - a time when ABC, CBS and NBC are admittedly afraid of sponsors pulling out at the hint of a political point of view.

Joshua Brand, the co-creator of I'll Fly Away, doesn't hide the fact that he's using his drama to say some things about today's race relations. He said that "race is obviously a very touchy, touchy subject for most people." So he's hopeful that his late 1950s setting will be more inviting. He doesn't want an audience to think, he said, "they're going to get hit over the head" by civil rights issues.

Here's the historical setting of the three series:

Brooklyn Bridge is a comedy/drama about crowded life in a New York flat in 1956. Stars are Danny Gerard (from Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers) as the Jewish teen who begrudgingly shares a room with his brother. The boys are practically raised by their mother-hen grandmother (Happy Days' Marion Ross) because their folks are busy earning a living.

This is the pet project of producer Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties), who stated proudly at a recent press conference that his grandmother "was the center of my universe" when he was growing up in Brooklyn. He quipped that the first words he heard in the morning back then were, "What do you want for dinner? I have to defrost."

That joke's in the pilot, but the autobiographical Brooklyn Bridge is not so much comedy as the angst of growing up in narrow circumstances. It's basically about the constraints, including the prejudices, of ethnic family life.

Homefront is a spicy slice-of-life drama about GIs returning from World War II. It intimately explores how the upheaval of fighting overseas affected everyone in a small Ohio town.

The series has a huge ensemble cast, and many steamy moments as some of the soldiers brought home war brides or faced "Dear John" situations when they returned.

But Homefront also tackles discrimination and changing values. Producers Lynn Marie Latham and Bernard Lechowick (who bring Knots Landing soap credentials to the project) said post-WWII is an exciting time for storytelling, but basically not a glowing and happy period. Lechowick views 1945 as a "mid-century beginning" where this nation once again focused on domestic issues in dire need of attention, such as the women's, civil rights and union movements. The two said they avoided watching old movies because too many vintage films have rosy views of what was going on. In many ways, Homefront is in sync with what returning Vietnam and even Desert Storm soldiers faced.

I'll Fly Away stars Sam Waterston as a Southern district attorney. He's raising three kids with the help of a black housekeeper (Regina Taylor) who's an activist in the civil rights movement. Brand and John Falsey, the creators of Northern Exposure, said they wanted to do a family drama in a non-traditional setting. The idea behind the series is to take an essentially good man (Waterston's character) and put him through the wringer, personally and socially. In the pilot, Waterston's Forrest Bedford says, "I want things to change and I want things to stay the same."

Period pieces are hardly new on television. Both ABC's 1960s-era The Wonder Years, about growing up, and time-tripping Quantum Leap from NBC have been ratings successes. There even have been two recent westerns, Paradise, which is gone, and Young Riders, which returns. Canceled from network schedules recently were China Beach and Tour of Duty, both Vietnam war dramas.

Working with the past sounds romantic, but the reality is it's not an easy task. There's the extra cost of intensive historical research, plus rental on high-ticket items such as old-time cars, antique furnishings and period clothes. Producers from the three new series wouldn't say how much more expensive it is to do dated television. But Homefront's Lechowick confessed, "we'll never be able to afford a whole block of shops, but we can do a storefront really well and we hope that the audience fills in the blanks outside the screen."

Playing with time allows a writer to tell a story that might not go over in today's lighter fare TV climate, as the producers of the three new shows contend. But young viewers had better not be bored away.

For many of today's teens, certainly, the past is equated with a few pages in a stodgy history book. So these new TV shows have taken care to give their programs contemporary touches along with the nostalgia.

For example, there's a milkman delivering glass bottles in Brooklyn Bridge, a scene that has to tug at the good-old-days heartstrings for many. But the story is about a teen who's desperately seeking some privacy as he tries to impress his first girlfriend. There's a scene where his friends are teasing him, and his family is slow to realize he's growing up and needs new freedoms. This would fit on any of the modern-day family sitcoms, such as Who's the Boss?

Goldberg also has hired thirtysomething's Ken Zunder as director of photography for Brooklyn Bridge because he thinks that the yuppie drama was "the best looking show on television." To make Brooklyn Bridge fresh, there are no sepia tones, so you don't think you're looking at old postcards instead of fresh TV. Rather there's a lively one-camera, non-audience format that takes viewers through the apartments, down the hallway, right into the streets - rare for a TV comedy that usually stays put in a living room (or like on Cheers in a bar).

Homefront has injected plenty of sex in its effort to grab the under-30 crowd, who were decades away from their first birthdays in the 1940s. One of the first scenes is of a young woman stuffing her bra in anticipation of her hero's arrival home. But in Peyton Place-styled melodrama, alas the soldier brings home a frisky British war bride.

Filmed in Atlanta, I'll Fly Away features three kids, ages 6, 13 and 16, for younger appeal. They remind us very much of contemporary children, dealing with the same worries such as succeeding at school sports and being popular. The Southern drama also has a contemporary woman in Kathryn Harrold, who plays a lawyer. And remindful of Northern Exposure and its wall-to-wall eccentrics, there's even a quirky high school wrestling coach, Zollicoffer Weed (Brad Sullivan).

Co-creator Brand added that once viewers are involved in the lives of this assortment of characters, "then we can deal with more troublesome matters."

Setting I'll Fly Away (the title of a hymn) in present day, he believes, "would have been just a little too close to the bone."