Fox resorts to 'Murder'; 'Downer' has fitting title
Oh, dear. Where's Jessica Fletcher when you need her? Like an old episode of "Murder, She Wrote," there's a serial killer stalking a peaceful hamlet in Maine in the new Fox series "Murder in Small Town X." The crimes, of course, are fictional - but this time, the detectives are real people. Or rather, real contestants. "Murder in Small Town X," which will have its premiere at 8 p.m. Tuesday, takes the Clue board game and sets it to shaky video a la "The Blair Witch Project" with a rulebook inspired by ABC's "The Mole." (Fox didn't supply a full hour episode to critics, just the murder scene.) In the next few weeks the 10 players will quiz the suspects, played by nearly two dozen improvisational actors. (There is a "General Hayden" among the cast of characters, but no Colonel Mustard.) The players will work with a real-life crime investigator to figure out whodunit. Each episode ends, inevitably, with one of the contestants being eliminated - and if you've been watching the promos on Fox, you know that won't be pretty. Watching "The Downer Channel," a fast-paced new comedy series, I tried to recall the last time NBC put something on in the summer that I really enjoyed. It was 1994 and filmmaker Michael Moore somehow got his funny and trenchant news satire "TV Nation" past General Electric's censors. "The Downer Channel," which airs at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, is not humorous or insightful in the least. It's also an atrocious waste of talent - besides on-screen appearances by Steven Wright, Teri Garr and Fred Willard, the show is produced by Steve Martin, former David Letterman producer Robert Morton and former Letterman and "Simpsons" writer Steve O'Donnell. It's hard to come away from this "Laugh-In"-styled show (everything but the laughs) without thinking that NBC has simply given up on summer. While CBS and ABC used the off-season to try out future hits ("Survivor" and "Millionaire"), NBC seems content to use its summer schedule as a dumping ground for failed development projects. A lot of people who watched British actor Clive Owen in the movie "Croupier" think he should be cast as the next James Bond. Judge for yourself: The crime caper movie airs at 7 p.m. Saturday on Starz! Owen stars as a croupier, an attendant who collects and pays out money at a London casino (he's a writer on the side), in this acclaimed 1998 film. "48 Hours" (9 p.m. Friday, CBS, Channel 5) tells the story of Scott "Hollywood" Scurlock, possibly the unlikeliest bank robber there ever was, but nonetheless one of the craftiest. He kept police at bay for years, heist after heist - including the largest in U.S. history - and was immortalized in an Ann Rule book. Wait till you see his tree house. Lifetime proved a point this season with its new drama series "The Division." It proved that you can make just as formulaic and predictable a cop show with female leads as one with male leads. In the season finale at 8 p.m. Sunday, one of the officers (Jinny, played by Nancy McKeon) shows up drunk to make an arrest, then does something so incredibly stupid that it threatens not only her life and career but also any remaining shreds of believability this show once had. You can reach Aaron Barnhart through the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com. @ART CAPTION:After she's suspended from the force, Jinny (Nancy McKeon) lets her drinking get out of control in the season finale of Lifetime's "The Division." @ART CAPTION:Owen @ART:Photos (2, color)
