Word: supertrain
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...SUPERTRAIN (NBC, daily, 7 a.m.-2 a.m.) Last show of the series. The Supertrain is commandeered by Freddie, a brilliant but unstable technician who rearranges the schedule, fires the porters, loses most of his passengers and nearly derails the crack RCA Express. Freddie: Fred Silverman. Executive discretion is advised...
...would be admirable if a wide variety of choices existed. Too many network shows are devoted almost entirely to exploring new dimensions of imbecility. That seems an old and boringly elitist criticism of TV, but it acquires fresh force, even urgency, if one sits through a few hours of Supertrain, The Ropers and The $1.98 Beauty Show...
...them. The trailers were immediately christened the Silverman Express. Then, in an unprecedented action last fall, Silverman dumped all seven of NBC's new shows, replacing them earlier this year with those more in his image. Most have been disasters, but none has failed quite so resoundingly as Supertrain, which cost almost $12 million just to pull out of the station...
...Supertrain was supposed to be the "Little Engine that Could" for NBC, the series that would pull it out of its midseason lows. But the network tried to do a big, complex show in less than half the time it requires. Producer Dan Curtis, 51, played Casey Jones, but even he was nonplused when he was asked last August to execute Programmer Paul Klein's idea. "What the hell is it," he asked, "Love Boat on wheels?" Oh, no, he was told; it would be more on the order of Hitchcock's North by Northwest, mystery-comedy with...
...with the Moscow Olympics. Silverman himself seems to lean toward that timetable. "If I had a crystal ball and predicted what television will look like by the end of 1980," he says, "my judgment would be that CBS and NBC would be on top. But what I learned from Supertrain is that there really are no short cuts, no substitute for careful thought and movement in very deliberate ways. This business of coming in with smoke and mirrors and doing a hat trick is nonsense...