Television: The New Season: I

Like Jimmy Stewart said, "TV is where the action is."

—Glenn Ford

There is a massive breakdown in law-and-order that should be curbed. I wanted to contribute something that said, "Preserve the system."

—Jack Webb

If this show fails, it'll be one of the great failures.

—Anthony Quinn

Among them, Ford, Webb and Quinn summed up the new prime-time TV season that premiered on the three networks last week. Some of the brightest and longest-holdout stars, now caught in the twilight of Hollywood and of their own careers, swallowed their images and signed on for TV series.

Quinn's fear of failure and the problem with the season have a common source: the same old production executives, like Jack Webb, and the old writers are still in command and timorously repeating and protecting themselves. The formats and scripts, as ever, are beneath the talents of the first-rank performers now appearing on television.

As Webb pointed out, law-and-order is this season's watch—or don't watch —word. More than half of last week's new shows concerned private or public eyes, or the crusade against crime. Even Larry White, an NBC programming vice president, confesses that the proportion represents "an overdose." But there are a few potentially diverting series and a few harbingers of reform.*

This story examines the season's new drama series. Next week TIME will review the comedy shows, hoping that some of them will have grown funnier by then.

THE PERSUADERS (ABC). "I'm Brett to my friends, but you may call me darling." Lady Brett Ashley speaking? No, Lord Brett Sinclair (Roger Moore, TV's engaging former Saint), who is the Oxbridge playboy half of The Persuaders. His co-persuader is Danny Wilde, a new-rich high roller from The Bronx (Tony Curtis), and the two of them womanize and swashbuckle around the Cote d'Azur "in the name of justice." For all their jet-set airs, their plebeian repartee and stupefying plots make Roger and Tony emerge more like Batman and Robin in ascots. Catch the show fast lest the Nielsen ratings get there first.

CADE'S COUNTY (CBS). Glenn Ford, an earlier choice for the Tony Curtis part in The Persuaders, fortuitously turned it down, he says, "because that would have meant traveling a year." Instead, Ford is making his TV debut in Cade's County as a sheriff in the contemporary Southwest. In the premiere, the plotting was raw, but the dialogue and new TV Star Ford proved uncommonly authoritative.

CANNON (CBS). This is another slice of Dashiell Ham, with William Conrad featured as a high-priced private investigator. The first episode, involving armed robbery of a rodeo box office, was unconvincing and, in the end, embarrassingly sentimental. Conrad himself, who resembles a cross between Orson Welles and Walter Cronkite, is a screen-crowding presence with a pomegranate voice enriched by eleven years as radio's Matt Dillon.