Show Business: Viewpoints

THE ROOKIES. ABC. Monday, 8-9 p.m. E.S.T.

"You crossed over, pig," the black hood sneers at the black cop. "You're on the other side." Since this is a series that emphasizes Social Relevance 101—a basic course on TV these days—the hood in that episode is just a good ghetto boy who has been led astray, and the cop is good old Paddy on the beat. The black punk begins to find the right path, in fact, when the black cop (Georg Stanford Brown) and his white roommate (Michael Ontkean), another rookie, take him home to their apartment to protect him from the really bad guys (white).

This series is a cheap rip-off of real concerns and real problems. It takes the nitty-gritty of police work and the often unpleasant truth about black-white relations and dresses them up so they won't offend—or interest—cops, blacks, good guys, bad guys, or the poor suckers in front of the tube.

OWEN MARSHALL, COUNSELOR AT LAW. ABC. Thursday, 10-1 1 p.m. E.S.T.

This series stops just this side of being good. The stories are relatively interesting, even daring by TV standards. This fall the good counselor has defended a minister accused by his parishioners of wife swapping, a young woman charged with attempting to seduce a teen-age girl, and a man who has been arrested for attempted skyjacking. The acting is generally good, and Arthur Hill, the embattled professor in Broadway's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is allowed to show at least some of his extraordinary range in the title role.

Most of his talent, as well as that of the rest of the cast, is wasted, however, because Owen Marshall is nothing more than the lawyer version of the standard doctor series. Although the jargon is different, a number of viewers might not even notice if Owen Marshall and Marcus Welby changed places for a week. The lawyers are all grimly competent—the legal and medical professions are nearly sacrosanct to TV writers—and Owen's clients are almost always innocent. The producers of the series, unfortunately, are not.

THAT CERTAIN SUMMER. ABC. Wednesday, Nov. 1, 8:30-10 p.m. E.S.T.

Despite all the dreary evidence to the contrary, commercial TV can, when it wants to, handle sensitive, controversial subjects with intelligence and maturity. This ABC Movie of the Week is the proof. A divorced father (Hal Holbrook) invites his 14-year-old son (Scott Jacoby) to visit him at his home near San Francisco—and to meet his lover (Martin Sheen). The father does not explain their relationship, however, and when the boy discovers that his father is a homosexual, he runs away. Bitter, he returns to his mother (Hope Lange).

The story is simple enough, but a minor marvel for TV nonetheless. There is neither sniggering nor condescension, and if Richard Levinson and William Link, who wrote and produced the film, are too earnest, they have managed to avoid all of the customary stereotypes. The acting is for the most part flawless, and Holbrook gives as good a performance as will likely be seen on TV—or just about anywhere else—this year. ∎Gerald Clarke