The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 109

The cover story The mob's biggest hit IIB)PlllJIUMlliUW 1,. 'Wiseguy' wins new time slot as Ken Wahl works wonders By Georgette Gouveia Staff Writer The best new show of the season moves to a new time slot 10 p.m. Monday. No, it's not ABC's "Hooperman" and "The 'Slap' Maxwell Story" or NBC's "A Year In The Life," although those are worthy contenders. It's CBS' "Wiseguy," an engrossing study of a federal agent who infiltrates organized crime disguised as a wiseguy, or mob lieutenant.

What's that you say, you haven't seen it? That's not surprising. In the fall, "Wiseguy" aired at 9 p.m. Thursdays opposite the ever-popular NBC comedy "Cheers." Now in "Cagney Lacey's" old time period, "Wiseguy" has a chance to shoot up in the ratings and become the biggest mob hit since "The Untouchables" raided prime time in the early 1960s. It is a measure of CBS' confidence in "Wiseguy" that the network is bumping its perennial Emmy Award winner, "Cagney Lacey," to 10 p.m. Tuesdays.

That confidence is not misplaced: In its atmosphere and emotional richness, "Wiseguy" often recalls the "Godfather" movies. A case study in quality TV The first group of episodes of "Wiseguy," which explored how federal agent Vinnie Terranova (Ken Wahl) won a place in the organization and heart of mob boss Sonny Steelgrave (Ray Sharkey) before bringing him down, was virtually a case study in what makes for good television. Most TV-show settings have a phony look. But "Wiseguy" got the details of life in the Italian-American communities of Brooklyn and Atlantic City just right the St. Anthony's feast at a local Roman Catholic church, the shots of elderly people chatting at a vegetable market.

Stephen J. Cannell, executive producer of "Wiseguy," attributes the excellent production values to careful research and the Vancouver setting. "The whole series is shot in Vancouver," he says, "we can get almost any look we want up there the Bronx, Queens." "Wiseguy" also benefits from solid writing that maintains the tension and ambivalence of Vinnie's undercover situation and that manages to be surprisingly humorous at times. You have to laugh when Vinnie's kidnapped boss, Frank McPike (Jonathan Banks), listens to the terrible things his tormentors have in store for him and says, "Don't sugarcoat it." As the sarcastic, poker-face McPike, Banks is right-on-the-money. So is Jim Byrnes as Lifeguard, Vinnie's cool-headed, sympathetic link with McPike, and Gerald Anthony as the Rev.

Peter Terranova, Vinnie's compassionate but hard-nosed brother. Ken Wahl plays undercover detective Vinnle Terranova In CBS crime series, Wahl the key to success As Vinnie, Wahl not only has to act like a gangster but serve as the audience's conscience, responding as the viewer would, with revulsion, to the nightmare world around him. Wahl who's made some good films Apache: The Bronx," "The and some lousy ones "Purple manages this juggling act very well. He's also the best thing to happen to female TV viewers since Tom Selleck. With all this going for it, "Wiseguy's" future remains clouded.

Cannell thinks the series will do all right in its time slot, but worries about attracting male viewers since the lead-in show is the female-oriented comedy "Designing Women." Then, too, the show's format, which calls for Vinnie to infiltrate a new crime organization after a group of episodes, may be a problem. The Steelgrave episodes were wonderful, partly because of Sharkey's performance as the tough-tender Sonny. The two-part episode airing Monday and Jan. 11 introduces Vinnie and the viewer to the high-flying world of Mel and Susan Profitt (Kevin Spacey, Joan Severance), the brother-sister team at the head of a $40-million-a-day international contraband operation. The first part is intriguing but glitzy in other words, very much like other TV cop shows.

Future episodes will return to Vinnie's Brooklyn family. While Cannell says he and many fans were sorry to see Sharkey's character go, he likes "Wiseguy's" format. "The fun of the show is that you can reinvent it every eight or nine episodes." The TV Book, Sunday January 3, 1988 Page 5.