Word: matlock
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...series about high-living husband-and-wife detectives. George C. Scott and Louis Gossett Jr. are among the stars who will join the old-codger crime-fighting brigade later this spring. Add to these such veteran TV sleuths as Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote, Andy Griffith in Matlock and Peter Falk in occasional Columbo movies, and you've got enough votes to block Clinton's Medicare reforms...
...demanding, a detective show can be a comfortable sinecure. For viewers tired of raucous sitcoms and hard-charging magazine shows, these TV whodunits provide easy-to-take, low-decibel entertainment. Murder, She Wrote, in its 10th season on CBS, is still a Top 10 hit; ABC's Matlock is a solid success in one of the week's toughest time periods; Diagnosis Murder and Burke's Law, new this season, have given CBS its best Friday-night ratings in years...
Nowhere is the about-face more evident than at third-ranked NBC. Last year the network did a radical spring cleaning, junking aging hits like Matlock and In the Heat of the Night (both were later picked up by other networks and are doing just fine, thank you) and adding a slew of youth-oriented sitcoms. The tactic didn't work, and this time around NBC programmers are touting two strategies for the fall: big stars and "broad-based family entertainment." Among their offerings: Valerie Bertinelli as a divorce living in Paris (Cafe Americain); a high-school coach...
...instructive hit too. The glut of youth-oriented shows seems to have created a viewer backlash. Matlock and In the Heat of the Night, two old- timers canceled by NBC last year, are back and doing well on new networks. NBC executives have acknowledged that they probably moved too fast to junk aging shows and replace them with youth-oriented sitcoms. It is no accident that CBS, the one network that has stayed aloof from the youthquake, is No. 1 in the ratings, with "mature" shows like Murder, She Wrote, 60 Minutes and Evening Shade...
...suddenly, an enormous amount is riding on it. NBC, the onetime kingpin of prime time, has seen its fortunes turn sour almost overnight. Its biggest hit of the '80s, The Cosby Show, took early retirement last spring, while several other veterans -- The Golden Girls, Matlock and In the Heat of the Night -- were given their unconditional release. (All were later picked up by rivals.) The network's last remaining Top 10 hit, Cheers, will call it quits at the end of this season; highly regarded younger shows like Seinfeld have not lived up to ratings expectations; and with the loss...