Word: sitcoms
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...feel when they discover that well-educated and well-to-do blacks have existed in the U.S. since the late 1800s. Your approach to black history (cover stories on hip-hop ghetto culture and attacks on me) perpetuates the notion that black people are nothing more than 1970s TV-sitcom stereotypes. LAWRENCE OTIS GRAHAM Chappaqua...
...remake of John Cleese's classic '70s British sitcom, Fawlty Towers, Payne (Wednesday, 8 p.m. E.T., CBS) stars Larroquette as a cranky, stingy hotelier undermined by his dominating wife (JoBeth Williams) and his own incompetence. If Payne serves any purpose at all, it's to show what a genius Cleese is. In the wrong hands the characters are badly drawn cartoons, the jokes offensive stereotypes and the plots a bad cross of the Keystone Kops and Three's Company. Sure, Fawlty Towers was also based on silly misunderstandings and coincidences, but it carefully built toward a manic, slapstick conclusion...
...Norm Show (Wednesday, 9:30 p.m. E.T., ABC), Macdonald, in the least likely scenario since Manimal, plays an ex-hockey player who is avoiding jail by paying off a community-service sentence as a social worker. While Macdonald is often amusing, the sitcom never rises above mediocrity. The problem, besides the premise, is that Macdonald's sharp sarcasm may be a bit much over half an hour...
...have promise (with an all-star list of Gen-X actors), and the last few minutes provide fun (with snapshots of lovers and losers). In between there is a void--feeble jokes, a lot of falling down and foolish declarations. Shana Larsen's script has the feel of a sitcom pilot, with the actors urged to make a quick impression. What's left? Fine turns by Courtney Love, Angela Featherstone, Dave Chapelle and Martha Plimpton. The film pushes them into mud, and they get up smelling sweet...
Whose Line, hosted with an easy bluster by Drew Carey (whose sitcom this show follows on ABC), is based on the British TV parlor game that made its debut in 1988. Performers are given characters to play, songs to devise, scenes to act out--all, we are told, instantly ad lib. A skit with a Zorro theme required that each actor's speech begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet. Series regular Ryan Stiles got the letter X. No problem: "Xavier Cugat once said...