Video: Lunks, Hunks and Arkifacts

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Matt Houston (ABC, Sundays, 8 p.m. E.S.T.) is a megarich Texan who seems to have gone into the crime-busting business because he saw too much television. As played, with some finesse, by Lee Horsley, Houston looks a little like Tom Selleck, sounds a lot like James Garner and apparently borrows his wardrobe from J.R. Ewing. Houston has all sorts of technological niceties at his fingertips, from a computer to a whirlybird. At least he has the good taste to not get caught up in the futuristic excesses of Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff), who, in Knight Rider (NBC, Fridays, 9 p.m. E.S.T), plays second banana to a talking black supercar.

Knight Rider may demonstrate a certain brazen, even desperate, retooling of stock elements that have already become television cliches. Remington Steele (NBC, Fridays, 10 p.m. E.S.T.), on the face of it, hardly seems more promising. But on prolonged acquaintance, it shows every sign of being the brightest, freshest television caper since Columbo. Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) is an ambitious, adventure-hungry private eye whose phone never rang until she invented a partner who was, naturally, male (she got his name from marrying an electric shaver to a football team) and who would nominally solve all her cases. Clients flocked. Then an incessantly self-admiring bunko artist figured out Laura's canny fraud and threatened to expose her unless she let him become Steele, with appropriate office space and elaborate perks.

The new Steele (Pierce Brosnan) is a scorcher for looks but a bit of a dim bulb in the brains department. Of course, he learns fast, usually while blundering through the most delicate stages of Laura's investigations. Of course, Steele takes credit for solving every crime. And of course, contrary to all her best instincts, Laura starts to get hung up for real on her own fantasy.

This is another show from MTM Enterprises and has many of the house hallmarks: askew humor, good pace that is not in too much of a hurry for character, smart acting, quirky scripts. One recent show, written by Lee Zlotoff and directed by Jeff Bleckner, borrowed, with shrewd and subtle acknowledgment, not only a plot device but a character from Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and did its source no dishonor. That is playing in the big leagues. But with the blithe charms of Zimbalist and Brosnan, Remington Steele is shaping up as championship stuff. —By Jay Cocks