Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 79

PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS iTi'niii iini -m i-i-iiiiiMTrMiMiirtri mr iin in' Matt Groening's sci-fi vision is the future on the fritz 'i 1 'Z V. 1 4- I FUTURAMA. Channel 29, 8:30 p.m. Sunday. I '3- v.a pi i att Groening has seen the future, and it doesn't work.

The "Simpsons" creator, whose new series, Fox's "Futur ama," premieres Sunday, grew up reading his older brother's sci -W -f. A try'" no ence-fiction magazines. "There's certain conceptions of the future which I think are more interesting than others," he told TV critics recently. "I love the look of the 1940s and '50s and early '60s. In the 1970s, things got kind of grim and in the 1980s, it was, like, dark and Groening himself, live lives of "quiet dignity," and are fed like fish.

The best gadget, though, is the robot Bender, a hard-drinking, wisecracking bucket of bolts who's so far the most interesting character in "Futurama." Legend has it that Groening created the Simpson family in minutes. He's had considerably longer to populate "Futurama," and while comparisons are invidious, they're also inevitable. The human and humanoid characters at the edges of "Futurama" may look and sound familiar to "Simpsons" fans, but they'll search in vain for a Bart for the fourth millennium. Fry, the delivery boy who's accidentally frozen on New Year's Eve 1999, only to wake up a thousand years later, is sort of a dullard. Leela, a one-eyed alien voiced by "Married With Children's" Katey Sa-gal, loses her edge too quickly in the face of Fry's unwillingness to conform to 30th-century custom and accept that his DNA dooms him to be a delivery boy forever.

There's time, though, for character development (Springfield wasn't built in a day). For now, "Futurama" offers a wealth of the sight gags that make it worth taping and rewatching: glimpses of familiar-looking heads in jars (the only and drippy And we decided that for 'Futurama') what we wanted to do was a kind of a 'Jetsons' universe with dripping pipes, basically." In the year 3000, where "Futurama" is set, "gadgets dont work right," Groening said. "I think the fun thing is to create these gadgets. People get around in New New York City, where the show is set, built on the Leela and Fry are flying high in Matt Greening's "Futurama" way which celebrity cameos will be used), a beer called Old Fortran, Bender, rums of New York City, by pneumatic tube. I don't know exactly how the technology works.

It's very fast, but you end up often hitting a brick wall when you come out the end," he said. 1111 -iOyL er, expelling a brick in apparent fear. Groening, by the way, reportedly ex 'Reckless' returns It's been a little more than a year since PBS's "Masterpiece Theatre" premiered Paul Abbott's "Reckless," a sharply written, gloriously acted love story featuring a persistent young doctor (Robson Green) and the much older object of his affection (Francesca Annis). Some of us have been waiting quite a while for the promised sequel to "Reckless," which has already aired in England (a reader e-mailed me a plot synopsis months ago, but I didn't want to spoil the suspense by looking). "Reckless: The Sequel" arrives as a two-hour movie April 18, but if you missed the first six-hour mini-series, "Masterpiece Theatre" is rerunning it for the next three weeks, starting Sunday night.

You can reach Ellen Gray by mail fax (215 854 58E2) or mail (Daily News, Box liBH. Philadelphia, Pa. 19101). Snyder signing off After tonight, I won't be losing sleep over Tom Snyder. Snyder's last "Late Late Show" for CBS begins at 12:35 a.m., with guest Dennis Miller, and it should pretty much put an end to my occasional insomnia.

There was nothing more annoying, really, than staying up past any reasonable bedtime to watch Letterman, only to then get sucked into Snyder's show. Once there, the novelty of back-and-forth conversation between (mostly) intelligent people who actually seemed to hear each other when they talked often left me too transfixed to turn off the set. The next day, of course, I was always a zombie. On Tuesday, snarky "Daily Show" veteran Craig Kilborn takes over Snyder's time slot. I'm feeling more rested already.

pelled a brick of his own when he learned that "Futurama" would occupy the cushy slot for only two weeks, before moving to 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays April 6 to make way for another animated series, "Family Guy," on Sunday nights. That's not very long to persuade viewers to follow him into the future. If the pilot episode of "Futurama" is any indication, Groening has had a lot of fun creating his gadgets, not the least of which are "suicide booths," where one may be dispatched (assuming the booth works properly) for a mere 25 cents. There's a Museum of Heads where disembodied luminaries of "The Stupid Ages," including Leonard Nimoy, Richard Nixon 'Devil's Arithmetic' offers teen's-eye view of the Holocaust by Rob Owen paint-by-numbers, but it's unlikely to seem that way to teens and children who aren't as familiar with the atrocities committed during World War II.

Kirsten Dunst stars as Hannah Stern, a 16-year-old spoiled New Rochelle, N.Y., high school student indifferent to her family's Jewish faith and their history. Rather than take a Passover seder seriously, she gulps wine, excited to get a buzz. After opening the door for Elijah, Hannah gets tossed back in time to 1941 Poland. A girl of the same age, Riv-kah (Brittany Murphy), explains that Hannah and she are cousins and Hannah has been sick with a fever. The two girls are from completely different worlds taste is too virginal for me," Hannah tells Rivkah), but they become friends.

About 30 minutes into "The Devil's Arithmetic," the Nazis show up and the whole town is corraled and forced to relocate to a concentration camp. It's-here that Hannah begins to appreciate the lessons and history her elderly relatives' in 1999 tried to share with her. Stripped of her nail polish and choice of whether to get a tattoo, Hannah comes to understand the horrors of the Holocaust. Based on the young adult novel by Jane Yolen, "The Devil's Arithmetic" was exec utive-produced by Dustin Hoffman (he introduces the movie) and Mimi Rogers (she plays Hannah's mom in 1999). Though it's less moving than other films in what's become the Holocaust genre, "The Devil's Arithmetic" (rated TV-PG) is disturbing nonetheless.

Younger children and teens are likely to be upset by some of the concentration camp scenes, as well they should be. Many TV shows claim to be family-oriented, but "The Devil's Arithmetic" provides an opportunity for children to watch with their parents, who can then explain that, although the movie is a work of fiction, its story is real. -i Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Some children may have seen "Schindler's List" or the more recent "Life Is Beautiful," but neither of those films was made with adolescents as its intended audience. "The Devil's Arithmetic," premiering at 8 p.m. Sunday on Showtime, filters the Holocaust experience through the eyes of a late-1990s teen-age girl.

Although surprisingly less involving than its adult predecessors, "The Devil's Arithmetic" is a noble effort nonetheless. For adults who have seen previous Holocaust dramas, it may seem a little bit too Kirsten Dunst in "Devil's Arithmetic".