PASADENA, Calif. – You really never know what you’re going to experience during the otherworldly carnival that is television’s summer press tour. One day you’re hobnobbing with CBS stars on the floor of the Rose Bowl. The next day, you’re licking your chops as Jimmy Kimmel grills you up a lunchtime burger.
And then, out of the blue, comes a mind-blowing 1980s flashback, courtesy of Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild.
The pair of blonde sex symbols – can we still call them that? – looking fit and as well-preserved as one could possibly expect, dropped by the tour to promote something called MyNetworkTV, a new low-scale broadcasting endeavor scheduled to kick off on Sept. 5.
The network is primarily made up of stations that are about to lose their affiliations when UPN and the WB merge into the CW.
In what could prove to be a brilliant piece of programming strategy, or a hideous, laughable folly, MyNetworkTV will devote its prime-time schedule exclusively to a pair of shows inspired by the addictive Spanish-language soap operas known as telenovelas. And that’s where Derek and Fairchild come in.
These gals, who drove the boys wild way back when, are starring – along with a new wave of hot young actors – in “Fashion House.” It’s a serial that, according to network publicity material, looks at the “dreams, successes and tragedies” of the fashion industry. The other new show is “Desire,” which chronicles two brothers on the run from the Mafia who fall in love with the same woman.
In most areas, the MyNetworkTV programming will be shown between 8 and 10 p.m.
Each new series has been adapted from Spanish-language predecessors and will run fresh hourlong episodes five nights a week (Monday-Friday), along with Saturday broadcasts that recap.
the highlights. Unlike regular soaps, these shows will have a defined end – culminating in 13 weeks, after which new shows will replace them. And yes, they’ll continue to provide work to needy female stars of yesteryear as Tatum O’Neal has already signed on for a future series.
The prodigious amount of episodes requires a full-speed-ahead production pace with multiple camera units working simultaneously to shoot as many as 22 script pages a day (compared to a dozen or less for a regular prime-time drama).
“I didn’t know I could memorize so much, but we’re doing it,” Derek said.
The quick pace doesn’t make for the most sumptuous of production values, but maybe all the hot bods – and the brawling babes – will be enough of a distraction.
“I guess there’s a certain audience for catfights and women rolling around and hitting each other,” said Fairchild, who noted that Derek “gives a good punch.”
“Will that be a regular thing?” a male reporter asked, perhaps a bit too eagerly.
“Only if you’re lucky,” she replied.
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LOOK WHO’S BACK: If Calista Flockhart is tickled to be back on prime-time television, you sure couldn’t tell from her press-tour panel session, during which she came off as stiff, uncomfortable and oh so bored.
Starring in the upcoming ABC family drama “Brothers & Sisters,” Flockhart heads a remarkable cast that includes, among others, Rachel Griffiths, Sally Field, Ron Rifkin and Patricia Wetting. It’s her first TV series since the iconic “Ally McBeal” left the air five years ago.
Flockhart, who has always been reticent around the media (remember all that attention devoted to her weight issues?) tended to offer only terse answers to questions and spent most of the session looking like she wanted to be somewhere else.
She did inform us that, yes, she still gets called “Al y” out on the streets and said her new character – a right-wing TV pundit – is so “fundamentally different” from the one she played on the show that made her famous. She also said that she “missed acting” and felt now was the right time to return to television because her son, Liam, is 5-years-old and entering school.
Other than that, she pretty much gazed off into space.
We’d love to report that in the show, at least, Flockhart is much more engaging. But “Brothers & Sisters” was the only ABC series not to be previewed for critics (much of it is being reshot around Field, who was a late cast replacement), leading to the inevitable murmurs that it could be a “troubled” series.
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Chuck Barney: cbarneycctimes.com
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(c) 2006, Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.).
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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-07-21-06 1522EDT
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