Word: hitchcock
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...that disappointment almost inevitably swept the land. When Spielberg's Amazing Stories debuted on NBC, the reaction from critics and viewers was a widespread yawn. The show's ratings, along with those of NBC's Alfred Hitchcock Presents and CBS's The Twilight Zone, settled into the lackluster middle of the Nielsen pack. A fourth anthology entry, George Burns Comedy Week, was canceled. Some revolution...
...with which it keeps us guessing. We are manipulated throughout the film in such a way that our uncertainty is kept tantalized until, literally, the last few seconds of the last scene. It is this reliance on mental, rather than physical, discomfort that allies Jagged Edge more closely with Hitchcock than with Halloween...
Indeed, three of the season's four new anthology shows deal explicitly with the unexpected, the strange and the fantastic: Steven Spielberg's eagerly awaited Amazing Stories, a new TV version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (both on NBC), and CBS's reincarnation of The Twilight Zone. CBS is premiering a fourth series, George Burns Comedy Week, which will feature a different comedy segment each week, linked by Burns, who acts as host, and the creative oversight of Co-Executive Producer Steve Martin. Each of these anthologies has enlisted a notable array of directors and writers who rarely or never...
...weekly budgets and top-drawer directors. But TV's newest mogul is keeping his series under tight wraps to heighten the suspense until its Sept. 29 premiere, leaving both critics and viewers to wonder whether its giant-size ambitions will enhance, or merely overwhelm, the small screen. Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which will follow Spielberg's show on Sunday nights, will consist largely of remakes of old Hitchcock episodes. That ploy worked surprisingly well in a TV movie last spring that spawned the series, but it could grow tiresome as the nostalgia wears...
...faces. Prime-time series attract loyal viewers by their familiarity, not by offering a vagrant astonishment each week. The operative word-of-mouth phrase is "you ought to see," not "you should have seen." Amazing Stories has no continuing characters, tone or stars--not even a regular host, like Hitchcock or Rod Serling. Viewers may prefer to settle in with Angela Lansbury's rumpled caginess in Murder, She Wrote instead of taking a chance with the faceless brilliance of the Spielberg series...