Television: Second Week Premi

Television's second week of premières was staged almost entirely by CBS. As incumbent ratings champion, having had eight of the top ten prime-time shows last season, CBS waited until the challengers had flashed nearly all their goods before spreading out its twelve new entries for 1964-65. In one or two instances, it could thus be said that the best was saved for last, but in general CBS's new shows lack the warmth of those on the other networks. CBS has a cool and mechanical touch. Its choices in comedy seem cynical, where ABC's and NBC's at worst seem merely foolish. Even the people in the CBS canned-laughter machine seem to laugh with a Hessian edge.

But at least three CBS comedies have no need of the machine. Judging by its premiere, Many Happy Returns is the season's best new show. As is generally the case with successful TV series, it is the principal actor who makes the difference. In this case, it is John McGiver, the balding fellow who waited on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and whose concise, precise portrayals have lightened other films from Love in the Afternoon to The Manchurian Candidate. Now he's an employee of a department store whose career depends on his ability to persuade people to keep merchandise they are trying to return. Urbanely, he convinces a woman that she should keep a teakettle because of its unique talent for whistling Beethoven's Fifth. In order to snow a snob, he poses as one Carter Phelps-Phipps of the Phelps-Phippses of Boston. "Strange, I don't recall your name in the Social Register," says the snob. "We have an unlisted page," explains Phelps-Phipps.

My Living Doll is a one-joke show, but the joke is a knockout. Julie Newmar, once of The Marriage-Go-Round, here plays a robot created by an aerospace scientist. Her viking-size body is actually a compilation of electronic equipment sheathed in homogenous polyethylene plastic. A mistress in a million, she will do anything she is told. In the middle of her back is an OFF and ON button. The man who works it is Bob Cummings, as a psychiatrist who is looking after Julie for his creative friend. "My construction is similar to the one-piece die casting," she explains in a husky voice as he takes her home. "But I was hand-molded."

"Have a drink?"

"I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't eat, I compute. At night I rest my transistors and"—looking down into her cleavage—"my solar batteries."

The Munsters are U, as distinguished from non-U, monsters—a nice, funereal, bourgeois family like the Addamses of ABC. Fred Gwynne is Father; he consists of parts of seven people. Yvonne De Carlo is Mother. She tells her son: "Don't forget to wash behind your points." Grandfather last week drank a potion to turn himself into Mr. Hyde, and when he didn't turn, he said his suspicions were confirmed: somebody had been cutting the stuff. At a masquerade ball, Father won first prize for his own face. "I've never been so insulted," he said, "since the day I died."