Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 591

1 KIDS TV All the Young Dudes BY ROBERT I MATTEO Back in the 1950s and the Mouse serial about life on a dude ranch was the first exposure to all things cowboy for some of us kid Easterners Now with a new generation of tenderfoots has a Western show to call its own This half-hour series an adventure-comedy on the range for 8-to-12-year-olds focuses on a peppy group of teens who spend their summers working at the Bar None dude ranch It debuts tonight at 6 and airs every Sunday for an initial 13-week run looks especially promising Shot at the atmospheric century-old ranch resort Tanque Verde outside of Tucson Ariz the series has roped in a passel of precocious talent including two natives of Tucson Playing Danny a 15-year-old American Indian ranch hand is 17-year-old Joe Torres a Tucsonian of Apache and Mexican Indian heritage The other local is Josh Tygiel who plays Buddy the 12-year-old son of the ranch owner Meanwhile Christine Taylor a teen from Pennsylvania co-stars as cheery pretty Melody Kelly Brown a New Yorker who can sometimes be found riding her horse on the beach at Montauk plays the slightly snobby 17-year-old equestrian Brad David Lascher plays The cast of Nick's 'Hey Dude' (top): Kelly Brown Debrah Kalman David lascher and David Brisbin (bottom) Christine Taylor Josh Tygiel and Joe Torres er of this production Nickelode on has grown unusually sensitive to any stereotyping that might creep into its shows Accordingly the girls on the Bar None ranch do just about everything the boys da The closest thing to a weapon on the show is a lasso most competent cowboy is in fact the seasoned cowgirl Lucy (Debrah Kalman) The show also strives for authenticity Bob Momingsky a Hopi Indian served as consultant on the hot dusty set making suggestions and advising the actors on small points actual Hopi that Joe Torres Mor-ningsky said proudly is also the first production that Nickelodeon has done on location So who cares if the series is basically a junior-division comedy-adventure? The scripts are reasonably clever and even manage to address contemporary issues like water conservation The picturesque locale will set urban hearts aflutter As executive in charge of production Brown Johnson said: taking TV out of the kitchen and onto the One imagines that plenty of young aspiring cowpokes will be happy to follow Ted the cocky senior staff member Nickelodeon executives believe Lascher who appeared in the failed NBC pilot Delaware has heartthrob potential As a show devoted to the point of view it is fitting that chief figure of mockery is also the chief authority figure an adult Ben Ernst (ployed by David Brisbin) the amusingly ineffectual and pompous city slicker who has taken over the ranch Ernst is always hatching schemes to advertise the ranch which inevitably backfire The casting of Brisbin a New York-bred stage actor typifies the spin of quirkiness that Nickelodeon gives to most of its productions background includes a stint performing with Mabou Mines the Obie-winning avant-garde theater troupe He is anything but your typical bland trying-to-please TV actor idea of Ernst is to plqy the well-intentioned said Brisbin on location at the Tanque Verde Ranch how I have a pocket pencil case and a calculator and how I tuck my pants into my cowboy boots In addition to its canny casting a fair amount of calculation has gone into oth- NEWSOAY 82 AUG 12 19OT Also new on Nickelodeon is 'Eureeka's Castle' (debuting Sept 4) a daily series that mixes puppetry animation and live action to teach problem-solving to pre-schoolers.