The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 29

5, I vW '-4 ,1 "VI1 1 1 IV 1: Yellows crowned champs of improvisation Tears For Fears: the British pop duo of Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal will bring their songbook, including the current hit Sowing The Seeds ot Love, to the Montreal Forum on Tuesday, May 8. Tickets go on sale tomorrow at .10 a.m., at the Forum box office and at all Ticketron outlets. jf 1j I'll ii' I lit "UfaimdM JL Jfk iV i IfciBffinl iffi ni-n- MM' mm GAZETTE PHOTOS, JOHN KENNEY Manon Gauthier of the Blue Team is in shouting form as she assails Raymond Legault (centre) and Ligue Nationale d'lmprovisation's founder and player Robert GraveL League's final game of season turns out to be a bit of a lemon $5.8 million for McCord Museum The federal and Quebec governments announced yesterday they'll be contributing $5.8 million toward expansion and renovation of Montreal's McCord Museum of Canadian History. The $30-million project, begun last summer, involves new exhibition halls, a reading room, classrooms, conservation laboratories, a library and updated security and sound systems. It's expected to be completed in the spring of 1992.

A grant of $24.5 million from the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation made the project possible. Federal Communications Minister Marcel Masse told a news conference held yesterday that the museum's renovations will enable "us to rediscover Canada and the world as perceived by the anglophone elite of this Canadian city at the end of the 19th century." Quebec Cultural Affairs Minister Lucienne Robillard said the governments are pitching in to help consolidate the museum's position as a research centre and "magnify Montreal's stature as a cultural metropolis." CBS pulls the plug on Pat Sajak NEW YORK CBS cancelled The Pat Sajak Show yesterday and announced a plan to temporarily replace the late-night talk show with action-adventure movies, starting Monday. Rod Perth, CBS vice-president for late-night programming, said the network was developing original shows for introduction in the fall. The Sajak show had its premiere Jan.

9, 1989. Paris Roch shows sold out PARIS Parisian teens are swooning over Roch Voisine, the New Brunswick-born singer whose first single, Helene, has made him an overnight pop star in Quebec. Voisine's three performances scheduled for April 21 to 23 at the landmark Zenith theatre sold out almost immediately even at $28 for each of the 16,000 seats. "At this rate, he could play here for almost an entire month," said Camus Coullier, Voisine's Paris promoter. More than a million copies of Helene have been sold in France.

Nomad Heart tops at festival Nomad Heart, an imaginative tale of a woman who breaks with Islamic tradition, won the top prize at the week-long festival of African films in Montreal. Tunisian Director Fitouri Belhiba accepted his $2,000 prize at yesterday's close of the sixth annual Journees du Cinema Africain. The $1 ,000 prize for the best African TV progam went to Umuvugangoma (The Tree with the Voice of a Drum) by Rafi Toumayan and Apollinaire Niyongago of Burundi. This year's festival presented 90 films and videos from about 30 mainly French-speaking African and Creole countries under the umbrella theme of human rights. By PAUL DELEAN THE GAZETTE i i umjj null mj.l pup.imuimniiiiu.illJiL 1,11 fll.i lljll.l.l Nil l.i!Plji 11 III -u r.

1 if iih fA Gravel, in an improvisation about the world in a billion years, emerging from a block of ice with the words: "Walt Disney, how's it going?" The high point of the evening came in the third period, when Marcel Leboeuf of the Yellows and Manon Gauthier of the Blues were assigned the challenge of producing, alone, an 1 1-minute improvisation on the theme "They undo, together, life's tangled web." As a couple unsure of whether to stay together or split, Leboeuf and Gauthier managed the considerable feat of moving the audience and holding their interest the full time. Leboeuf was later named the game's first star. Gravel said that, overall, the three-month season had been a good one for the four-team LNI, with attendance up, from a year ago. The league handed out its year-end awards after the championship game, and Martin Drainville of the Green Team emerged as the big winner. Drainville was the most popular player, leading scorer, and player most often chosen as a game star.

For a half-dozen LNI players, the season still has another month to run. A team of Gravel, Potvin, Legault, Chantal Baril, Claude Legault and Raymond Arpin leaves this weekend for a European tour culminating in the World Cup final in Belgium on May 17. It seemed approriate that the Yellow Team prevailed in Sunday's finale of the Ligue Nationale d'Improvisation (LNI) season. The game itself was a bit of a lemon. "So much is expected of a final game, but you can't always deliver brilliance.

It's improvisation the unknown. That's what makes it interesting," said LNI founder and veteran player Robert Gravel, whose Blue Team was edged 8-7 in the Spectrum showdown. For the Yellows, it marked the third year in succession they'd claimed the Charade Cup, symbol of LNI supremacy since 1978. Gravel said both teams were nervous and tentative and it showed, particularly in the first two periods. Despite the eagerness and enthusiasm of a capacity crowd, none of the 1 1 improvisations really soared.

Spectators had to content themselves with a few memorable one-liners. Among them: Sylvie Potvin (Yellow), in a skit where the Earth has become almost unlivably polluted: "It's because people persisted in using plastic diapers." Sylvie Legault (Yellow), as an amorous equestrian with a docile horse and an eye on a local politician: "I'm anxious to mount a real animal." Yellow Team hoists the Charade Cup which they have won for third straight year: Videotron subscribers luck out with very British Edge of Darkness Joe Don to star on TV in a country where doubling up is usually confined to surnames. In the final hour of Edge of Darkness, the unlikely duo die miserable deaths, poisoned by radiation and hunted like dogs on the Scottish moors. Sorry to spoil the ending. But getting there through six commercial-free hours of Edge of Darkness will be half the fun and it's infinitely more enjoyable than watching the Vermont ETV Auction.

I T-A MIKE BOON! TV RADIO a.m.) show if I ever saw one. Y4 It will be interesting to see the Twin Peaks ratings and ABC's reaction to the show's numbers. The aiich-ence might be small, but it almost certainly will be dcmographically desirable, i.e. young, hip and affluent, Put it another way: My mother doesn't like Twin Peaks. But Mom is not in the market for a Cadillac, which is one of the series' sponsors.

In addition to offering advertisers an hour tafhJg their wares to an elusive audience, ABC's supporjof Twin Peaks wins the network brownie points wjthoijt-ics' quality television lobby groups. The netwJrxHs winning a reputation as the home of cuttingdge tv. Viewers will recall that NBC followed this roufxjur-ing the 1 980s, winning respectability with shows'such as Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere, ratings wittf tjie Cosby Show and Cheers and untold riches as thetpc-rennial leader among U.S. commercial While poor CBS desperately scrounges for a formula that might help itself out of third place in the-ratthgs race, ABC is Number 2 and trying harder with-an NBC-like mix of mass-appeal hits (RoseanncWhq's the Boss) and quality shows: The Wonder Years; TJur-tysomething, Doogie Howser.

ABC is picking up steam with this spring's bumper crop of hot new scries Equal Justice, The Mfrshll Chronicles, Capital News, the sublime Twirt Peaks and, due during May sweeps, Brewster Place jQprah Winfrey's first drama scries). If ABC is intent on becoming the Network of 6e 90s. it may hesitate before kiling off the young dcca3e's best new television program. With Cosby et al poufiig zillions into network coffers, NBC carried some critically acclaimed ratings stiffs (notably St. ElsewhereVfor years.

Let's hope ABC is similarly indulgent treatment of Twin Peaks. Go east, young man and you too, young woman, if you're looking for quality British television drama this week. Montrealers who live west of the Videotron cable company's subscriber area may be inclined to visit their friends in the eastern zone this week. Vermont ETV, the Public Broadcasting Station available to CF Cable subscribers, continues to fill prime time with its unbearable fundraising auction. But WCFE-57, the Pittsburgh PBS station on Videotron, is running Edge of Darkness.

The British Broadcasting Corporation mini-scries begins tonight at 9 and continues through Thursday with nightly two-hour episodes. While luckless CF Cablers decide how much to bid on a set of bunk beds or a Killington ski pass from the cup-rattling Channel 33, Viddotronitcs can enjoy an excellent scries that won everything in sight at the 1 586 British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (the Brit combination of the Emmys and Oscars). Edge of Darkness was honored as Best Series and added awards for Best Lead Actor (Bob Peck), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound and Best Original Music (composed and played by blues guitar legend Eric Clapton). Viewers who caught Twin Peaks Sunday night, immersing themselves in David Lynch's murky world of murder and smalltown kinkincss, can let their para-noiakick intoovcrdrivc by tuning Channel 57 tonight. Edge of Darkness combines elements of The China Syndrome, Silkwoocl and A Very British Coup.

Peck portrays Ronnie Craven, a Yorkshire police officer and widower father of a 21-ycar-old political activist (played by Joanne Whalley). Early in Edge of Darkness, Craven picks up his daughter at a Labor Party meeting and they head home in a driving rain. Coming up their steps, Craven pere et Jille are confronted by a shotgun-wielding nut who takes aim at the Crank up the VCR for Thursday night, when the last part of Edge of Darkness goes head-to-head with the second episode of Twin Peaks. The new ABC series, which began with a two-hour pilot Sunday night, is superb. Twin Peaks is the best new drama of the television season, the most innovative scries since The Singing Detective and the most daringly experimental program attempted by an American commercial network.

The beginning of Twin Peaks' pilot episode went almost 25 minutes without a commercial break. The unusually long stretch let the series set up its murder story, introduce major characters and minor lumber-town nut cases and hook viewers on pacing and cinematography deliberate and lush, respectively that are never seen on American TV. An informal poll of friends and colleagues yesterday revealed that everyone was blown away by Twin Peaks. We all loved it, but opinion was divided on the scries' chances for survival. I fear Twin Peaks will be done like dinner when it moves into its regular Thursday time slot opposite Cheers (setting up a great competition between psychiatrists, the sweetly neurotic Frasier Crane on Cheers and Twin Peaks' barking mad Lawrence Ja-coby).

It's tough to figure Twin Peaks as a 9 o'clock show. This is television for grownups, a 10 p.m. (or 2 cop. Emma jumps in front of her father and is killed. (There's an epidemic of this stuff on TV this week.

Twin Peaks' mystery surrounds the murder of a 17-year-old girl.) Who killed Emma Craven? Was the shotgun blast really meant for her father? These and many other intriguing questions are answered eventually in a masterfully crafted mini-scries that features plots, sub-plots and enough double-dealing intelligence agents to overthrow a minority government. As was the case in A Very British Coup, the good guys in domestic and foreign intelligence turn out to be bad guys, their wickedness exposed as Edge of Darkncss's hero begins to peel away layers of deception. As the grief-stricken Craven applies his police skills to unravelling his daughter's labrynthine anti-nuclear involvements, he finds himself allied with Darius Jedburgh, a larger-than-life Central Intelligence Agency spook (played by Joe Don Baker). You have to love the BBC's flair for casting: Peck is an alumnus of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Baker honed his craft in ulking Tall and becomes the first.