TV Land revives 'Fernwood' and 'Hartman'

TELEVISION What a great start to the summer - TV Land is dusting off "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and "Fernwood 2Night" in a VCR-special marathon Friday nights starting at 11. In case you weren't around or have forgotten, these two shows put the fictional burg of Fernwood, Ohio, on the map back in the 1970s. Not an actual map, mind you, but the one where all roads lead to places with familiar names like Mayberry, Cicely and Smallville. "Mary Hartman" was a soap opera ... or maybe it was a loony lampoon of all soap operas ... or maybe it was both. Whatever it was, no network would touch the thing back in 1976. The general consensus was that Norman Lear, who had been bending network taboos for years starting with "All in the Family," this time had gone too far. By mining comedy from such topics as drug abuse, indecent exposure and wife-beating, "Mary Hartman" made itself unwelcome with the Big Three. So Lear syndicated his show to non-network stations, where it became an immediate sensation. For a while "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" was the most talked-about show on TV, and its spaced-out, Heidi-headed star, Louise Lasser, was featured on the covers of mass-circulation magazines, some of which surely found their way into the offices of the network chiefs. Who, as we all know, never learned their lesson. To this day, the networks continue to lose viewers to their non-network rivals because the latter have the nerve to put on provocative new shows (think of "The Osbournes") and the networks don't. "Mary Hartman" exhausted itself after two seasons and 325 episodes. Lear followed up with a secondFernwood-based satire that would leave a more lasting imprint and would launch the careers of such comedic talents as Martin Mull, Fred Willard, Alan Thicke and Harry Shearer. "Fernwood 2Night" had Mull playing Barth Gimble, the twin brother of Garth Gimble, Mull's erstwhile character from the "Mary Hartman" series. Led by the pasteurized host, whose press-on grin barely veiled his contempt for everyone around him - especially the moronic sidekick Jerry (Willard), who got his job through nepotism - "Fernwood 2Night" fricasseed the phony rituals of daytime television. The opening episode of "Fernwood 2Night" is an instant classic. Watching it now, what's amazing isn't that it's still funny, but that it still has the power to shock. You might have heard about "Fernwood's" most notorious sketch, in which a man in an iron lung plays the piano upside down - but wait till you actually see it. That sketch was actually supposed to be more shocking. The script originally called for a talented tyke to run on stage and innocently unplug the iron lung during a dance number while the piano player gasped for air. It was too much even for Lear. "Norman came down and said, 'You can't do this!' " Willard said last week in an interview. "It was the only time I remember anyone vetoed anything." R.J. Cutler, whose documentary series about high school life, "American High," transferred from Fox to PBS before graduating with honors, focuses once again on the next generation with his new series, "Military Diaries." It has its premiere at 9 tonight on VH1. A few young recruits serving aboard the carrier USS Stennis in the Middle East were given camcorders for making video diaries of themselves as they battled both an unseen enemy and the daily drudgery of ship life. Since this is a VH1 show, we hear a lot about their musical tastes. But the monotony is conveyed so well here that when an officer says she couldn't survive without her music, you believe her. Imagine a roomful of Muppets lip-syncing the Jerky Boys and you've captured the bizarre essence of "Crank Yankers." Airing Sunday on Comedy Central, it's from "The Man Show's" Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla. I've never been a connoisseur of prank phone calls, but there's a touch of genius in the marriage of fuzzy, fabric-covered playthings and actual audio from the calls. Listen for the voice of your favorite stand-up comic; more than a dozen are heard dialing for dummies. Now imagine Amish teen-agers on a rampage. It's not a prank, but the disturbing and absorbing documentary "Devil's Playground," airing at 7:30 p.m. Thursday on Cinemax. - You can reach Aaron Barnhart through the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com