Mix-Minded NBC Ti Escape 'No. 3 Ting C r m Tho New Season D By Eric Mink Post Diptch TVRadio Critic . FIRST OF THREE PARTS Whe n Brandon Tartikoff. president of NBC Entertainment, publicly predicted that NBC would not finish the 1984-85 prime-time season In third place, some cynical observers Immediately pictured NBC winding up In fourth. Programs that win boatloads of Emmys. critical acclaim and a remarkable profit turnaround still haven't shattered NBCs image as the perennial No. 3 network. But the gap between that Image and reality is substantial N BC Is first in Saturday-morning programming and second in news, and it has managed to narrow the distance between It and Its competitors in prime time and day time. In fact. New York's major advertising agencies are predicting that NBC. ABC and CBS will be closer than ever th is season in prime-time ratings. . What matters to viewers, though, Is not a network's standing but the shows it puts on the air. NBC has run the high and low roads, with successful dramas as vastly different as "The A-Team"and "Hill Street Blues" and comedies as ridiculously divergent in approach as "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes" and "Cheers." This fall, NBC has nine new shows on its prime-time schedule, and their personalities are as split as those of NBCs existing programming. There are air-headed diversions, flat-out action-adventures, promising comedies, massages of stars' egos, daring experiments in dramatic form and poorly executed concepts whose lack of worth should have been obvious from the start Here's a rundown of the lineup: "Highway to Heaven" (Wednesdays at 7): Talk about massaging star egos. Michael Landon Is the creator, executive producer and lead character in this series, for which he also occasionally writes and directs. . Landon plays an angel sent to Earth to help people. He is not omnipotent, but he Is pragmatic. In the pilot film, Landon's character reluctantly agrees to use his power to sense the future to help a group of old folks win enough ' money at a race track to bold onto their home. Actually. Landon's powers are wildly inconsistent. He can create food, flowers and bicycles; he can open locks and sabotage engines without touching them, but he cannot simply manufacture the money the people need. No, it's off to the races. NBC says Landon's pilot film got better response from test audiences than any other show in NBC history. So much for testing. ' If nothing else, the show is shamelessly manipulative, at one point using the old puppy-dog ploy to pluck the viewers' heartstrings. At least NBC can point to this show and claim, as it did with Landon's "Little House on the Prairie," that it is being wholesome. "It's Your Move" (Wednesdays at 8:30): You can't get much further from an angel drama than this. Young ' Matthew Burton (played by Jason Bateman) plays a 14-year-old con man who constantly comes up with schemes to raise money. Matthew lives with his mother (Caren Kaye) and tries to make life a little easier for her by slipping wads of cash Into her purse when she's not looking. She doesn't seem to notice. Conflict arises when Norman Lamb (David Garrison) moves into the vacant apartment across the hall that Matthew had been using as his base of operations. Norman sees right through Matthew's cons and becomes his f 01L In concept, this show is an altered, modernized versloo of "The Phil Silvers Show," the classic series about con man Set Ernie Bilko. Matthew even has a chubby. slovenly sidekick in the mold of Pvt. Dobeiman. You could hardly expect "Iff Your Move" to equal the achievement of the Bilko show, perhaps the greatest TV comedy of all time. But if it can come close and if an amoral conniving 1 4 year-old doesn't turn off audiences "It's Your Move" could be worth a look. "The Bill Cosby Show" (Thursdays at 7): "You don't miss your water, til your well runs dry." the old song goes. You don't realize how much you've missed Bill Cosby until you see him on television again. In this new half-hour family comedy. Cosby plays a doctor whose office and home are together in a New York v .r ) V - J f -.' v. ' ' "s r ' - v rij vf - r i "The Bill Cosby Show" . . . Thursdays, 7-7:30 p.m. In the new family comedy, Bill Cosby plays an their four children (clockwise from top left, obstetrician living in a New York brownstone Tempestt Bledsoe, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, with his wife Clair (Phylicia Ayers-Allen), and Lisa Bonet and Keshia Knight Pulliam). City brownstone. Judging from the pilot episode. Cosby and bis writers have managed to create characters a father, mother and several kids who capture and convey the genuine humor Inherent in family life. The parents love their kids and occasionally hate them. The kids love one another and fight and tease each other relentlessly. If I had to pick a single new NBC show to wch, this would be IL "V (Fridays at 7): What more can you say about this weekly series continuation of the much-watched miniseries? The story line picks up one year after the end of the miniseries on Liberation Day. It seems the aliens are back. Humans will battle the nutty mouse-munchers week after week, with each side trying to stay a step ahead of the other's scientific and strategic moves. Two promising signs: First, each episode will cost more than $1 million to produce. For that kind of money, and with a few special-effects shortcuts, "V" the series might be able to approach the consistent visual quality of "V" the miniseries. Second, Michael Ironside, who played a ruthless CIA : killer turned freedom fighter in the miniseries, has signed on to reprise the role In the weekly version. Ironside may be best known for his spectacular appearance In the horror film "Scanners." "Hunter" (Fridays at 8): Take an ex-football star (Fred Dryer). Add a luscious, tough female (Siepfanie Kramer) for demographic balance. Stir thoroughly in a ; watered-down soup pressed from the meat of Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movies. Presto. You have "Hunter," a humorless action show that paints careful cops as buffoons and cops who blithely disregard the law as heroes. "Miami Vice" (Fridays at 9): Can human drama, violence, the techniques of music videos and the feel of theatrical movies be brought together to produce an effective weekly police series? That's what "Miami Vice"; " Is striving for, which Is a pretty tall order for television. Still, the production team boasts credits from "Hill Street Blues" and the movie "Thief," and they've comeup with a knockout pilot film. They've also hired a pair of lead actors Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas -L-who rad iate a cool kind of intensity that is exceptionally appealing on screen. Set in Miami, the show concentrates on the professional and personal crises in the lives of vice cops in a city where the drug trade Is one of the area's most important " industries. The long-run challenge for this series will be to match the quality of the pilot week in and week out Good scripts, a constant struggle in Hollywood, will be even more critical to a show with aspirations as high as this one. With . its commitment to movielike visual quality and to -. contemporary music by original acts, "Miami Vice" also will have to overcome budget constraints. "Partners in Crime" (Saturdays at 8) : A mystery series in more than one sense of the word. Loni Anderson ' and Lynda Carter play partners in a private detective firm situated in San Francisco. The real mystery is whether this series will be worth ; the film it's shot on. NBC made a commitment to the series based on the stars, so no pilot film was made. Then, after ; the first week of production, the production company brought in a new director, a new executive producer and a new producer. NBCs Tartikoff told TV writers that NBC was "going to do everything in our power as a network" to make sure the See NBC, Page C