The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 86

26 Part IV-Frt. jm. 26, 1979 Cos Angeles Slmefi TV REVIEWS 114 SL KM Previewing the New Shows 'Turnabout' on NBC 8 PM TONIGHT Arnold's fakin' but Willis convinces him that the "illness" is real! Conrad Bain Gary Coleman Todd Bridges Charlotte Rae "Hong Kong: A Family Portrait," Sunday at 8 p.m. on PBS, is rather a disappointment It's like one of those old movie travelogues of the past You expect to hear Fitzpatrick saying: "And as the sun sinks over the sampan, we take our leave of beautiful Hong Kong It's an interesting portrait of that pivotal Asian colony but a toothless one. Hearing "Oh, Susannah" sung in Chinese has its fun as does watching an industrious family of boat merchants hawking their wares to visiting ships.

This is the Leong family and much of the film concentrates on them and how they live their lives. Not only the boat people have our attention. We go ashore, slip through the crowded streets of Hong Kong, follow a young couple on a date to the Hong Kong night market with its snake salesmen and its karate expert, a nightly carnival. We visit a Chinese opera, see the waiting corpses in "a hotel for the dead" waiting to be buried in native soil. But though narrator Burgess Meredith tells us that Hong Kong, which sits like a flea on the rump of China, has an uncertain future, what with the British lease running out on the Crown Colony in 1937, the political and economic consequences are skimmed over lightly.

The film was written by Miriam Birch with David Gro-gan as associate producer, Barry Nye as editor, and music by Gerald Fried. Next of the monthly specials will be "Last Stand in Eden," a study of elephants versus farmers in Kenya, due March 4. -CECIL SMITH it i a i. i 45Hl TONIGHT Ronald, Checko and Zipper are brothers of an outcast fraternity with no tradition, no bread and an unquenchable lust for coeducation! Chris Lemmon Randy Brocks Jon Cutler Larry Anderson Mary Frances Crosby Hello McLean Stevenson "Turnabout" (tonight at 9 on NBC) is a funny show. At least, the opening chapter of this new NBC series (that's right: NBC, which hasn't had a funny show since Redd Foxx left) is, to my mind, very funny.

John Schuck and Sharon Gless are an affluent young couple bored with their lives. Schuck is a sportswriter for magazines like Sports Illustrated; Sharon is the hotshot vice president of a cosmetics company many ways can you say 'pink'? They talk vaguely about how nice it would be to change places-John to be Sharon and Sharon to be John. Presto! Sharon (over John's objections) buys a plaster idol from a Gypsy, a statue reportedly with magic powers. don't you keep it?" asks John sourly. Says the Gypsy: "I have everything.

My daughter is married and my son writes every week. As you undoubtedly know, the idol makes the turnabout and they switch places. But not bodies. John is encased in Sharon's luscious frame while she makes do with his. Their adjustments his making up her face, trying to walk in her high heels-, she painting his toenails in the bubble bath; their ultimate adjustment in bed-provide the fun.

How long the fun will last, I can't say. Steve Bohco and Michael Rhodes adapted the famous old Thome Smith novel; Richard Crenna directed. They were blessed with their stars. It's hard to believe either Schuck or Sharon could be improved on. CECIL SMITH 'The Dukes of Hazzard' on CBS If a new series opens with a sportscar chasing a police car down country roads through great clouds of dust and tire-squealing turns and springs-smashing leaps all set to twanging country music and you don't immediately leap to your set to switch to something else, it's your own fault.

This is the opening of "The Dukes of Hazzard," an hour-long series from CBS beginning tonight at 9, and it even makes you regret they moved "The Incredible Hulk" away. The show modeled after any number of old Burt Reynolds movies, sans Burt, is to my mind, absolutely dreadful. Hazzard, we are told, is an utterly corrupt county run by a corrupt sheriff named Roscoe who gets his orders from a corrupt political boss named Boss who eats raw liver for breakfast at the local Boar's Nest. The Dukes are Luke (Tom Wopat) and Bo (John Schneider), one blond, the other dark. They are cousins who live with their moonshiner grandfather (Denver Pyle) who is in all things but booze (the family business since before the revolution) a God-fearing and honorable man.

There's another cousin named Daisy (Catherine Bach) who wears very few clothes, waits table at the Boar's Nest and has the punch of a mule. The cousins band together in Luke's sportscar to fight crime, in this case, the slot machines imported into the county by the sheriff (James Best) and his Boss (Sorrell Booke). The show is from Warner Bros. Cy Waldron and Bill Kelly wrote the opening script, directed by Rod Amateau. Weylon Jennings sings the accompanying ballads.

After seeing this, the south may secede again and I wouldn't blame it. -CECIL SMITH 'Hong Kong: A Family Portrait' The second "National Geographic" special of the season, On the premiere of NBC's shortlived "The McLean Stevenson Show" two years ago, Stevenson was a sitcom father of two who went to pieces when his 24-year-old daughter stayed out late on a date. Now, on the premiere of "Hello, Larry" at 9:30 tonight on NBC, Stevenson is a sitcom father of two who goes to pieces when his 15-year-old daughter contemplates "going all the way." If big Mac stopped having TV daughters, we'd all be spared a lot of misery. In any event, tonight's unfunny pilot-premiere has a deja-vu quality that doesn't promise good things for the series, which is about single father Larry Alder, who is better at giving advice on his Portland, radio phone-in show than he is to his adolescent daughters at home. Kim Richards and Donna Wilkes are his daughters Ruthie and Diane.

Joanna Gleason is Larry's producer and George Memmoli is the station's obese engineer who provides the half-hour's only laugh when he turns down an offer to car pool because "I am a car pool." For a show that presumably could have a substantial teen audience, the pilot, written by executive producers Perry Grant and Dick Bensfield Day At a is very flippant about sex. The episode turns on Ruthie's crisis over a boyfriend's desire for sexual relations. A lot of cheap jokes and silliness occur before Larry ultimately advises her to have faith in herself and abstain boy will say anything to get what he but it's a very simplistic, timidly offered resolution to a serious problem. Coming off his recently cancelled CBS comedy "In the Beginning," Stevenson performs earnestly, but without notable success in a role so reminiscent of the beleaguered pussycats he's played in the past that saying goodbye to Larry would not be difficult. -HOWARD ROSEN3ERG TONIGHT A magical spell strikes the Alstons.

Now Penny occupies Sam's body and Sam occupies Penny's! Sharon Gless John Schuck J'ue never even TONIGHT McLean Stevenson is a wiz on his radio talk show. But he gets plenty of static from his two teen-age daughters! Kim Richards Donna Wilkes Joanna Gleason George Memmoli From the producers of "One Day At A Time" You're in Hazzard County, where the lawmen are crooked, the good guys are outlaws and ever'body's in-laws! tw Meet the Duke clan. fL a good cause or a bad woman! on a speii ana vnjvy iricr lauyns. It'll do you good! Starring Tom Wopat, John Schneider, Catherine Bach, Denver Pyle, James Best ana borreii Booke. Original music composed and sung by waylon Jennings.

Mimic nerformed bv I lie fiaivitfi irruorupf vuuwwu I 7 1 JIT TW by Richie Albright. JZZfi'' I r' 'm kV ,1 I iOVW ft i 10PM TONIGHT Stories of the winners and losers of a million dollar lottery! Adam Arkin Katherine Helmond Abe Vigoda Edd Byrnes Priscilla Barnes Foster Brookes Bill Daly Vt rrT An iff, 4 aK jtj CJ wL 1 IT UN.