TV Blows Its Horn of Plenty

The only thing wrong with New York’s Museum of Broadcasting is that it’s not in Los Angeles.

Once a year, though, the museum wisely comes West with its cornucopia of goodies, holding a two-week festival here that toots television’s horn.

Honk if you love “Gunsmoke.”

This year’s festival, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, began Wednesday and runs through March 31. Like its predecessors, it salutes people and shows that have had a profound influence on TV, along with some that are merely profoundly terrific.

You get creators along with clips, golden oldies and golden newies, the serious and the silly, all acknowledging TV as a global centerpiece.

If you love something enough, the temptation to proselytize about it is irresistible. So . . . what I like best about this year’s festival is that it gives me an excuse to praise some of my favorite new shows again.

With so much of prime time on the cutting edge of mediocrity, no wonder the last year has been so bracing, soaring to unexpected heights with the debut of at least five new series that could form their own Golden Age of Television.

Two of them--NBC’s “A Year in the Life” and the CBS series “Frank’s Place”--are omitted from this year’s already crowded festival. But the others--”The Tracey Ullman Show” on Fox and ABC’s “The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story” and “thirtysomething”--were each designated a showcase night, with Ullman’s having been first up Thursday.

“All of these represent a new wave of television,” said museum vice president Letty Aronson.

If not a new wave, at least an encouraging ripple.

Ullman, for example, is Fox’s cosmic ray from Britain--the good, the bad and the ugly fused in one brilliantly inventive mind, a gifted young actress and extraordinary mimic whose ability to create intriguing sketch characters is unrivaled on TV. At her best, she is the best.

Fox, seeking an edge over its larger network competitors, has allowed Ullman and Co. to push against the walls of traditional TV comedy. Her bold show’s creative staff is headed by executive producer James L. Brooks, who recently gave America “Broadcast News.”

“The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story” gets its due in an evening (Thursday at 8) that celebrates the work of its creator, Jay Tarses--a man Aronson correctly labels “one of the few really successful writers to take chances.”

Such praise would earn a sarcastic taunt from the Slapper, an old-fashioned, marginally tolerable, dead-ended, cynical, enigmatic sportswriter adrift in melancholy and middle age.

Faultlessly played by Dabney Coleman, Slap is an inspired, wonderful character with no exact duplicate. He may also be a fleeting, euphoric moment in TV time, judging from recent episodes that have dulled Slap’s serrated edges, reportedly to enhance his female appeal and expand his audience.

Tarses is the Darth Vader of TV comedy. There’s a bleak streak in him that at once darkens and distinguishes his series--from the late, great “Buffalo Bill” to “The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story” to “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” which returns to NBC March 24.

Appearing with Tarses will be executive producer Bernie Brillstein, Coleman and Blair Brown, who plays the fascinating Molly, an unfulfilled divorcee who pines for her ex-husband and is still undecided about what she wants to do when she grows up. Many other adults have the same problem.

Along with Slap, in fact, Molly defines the ambivalence and uncertainties of life. Unlike most TV series, a Tarses half-hour resolves nothing, leaving a trail of loose ends that become a powerful inducement to tune in the next week.

Parallel reality threads “thirtysomething,” whose executive producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick--who make TV their laboratory--and eight cast regulars show up at the festival March 24.

A cinema-like hour about a witty circle of friends in their burdened mid-30s, “thirtysomething” just keeps getting better. This is Rolls-Royce TV--its style, writing, direction, performances and production quality lifting it to rare, dreamy realms.

Inconsistency had been the only flaw of “thirtysomething.” But everything has now come together, especially in the last two episodes--truly artful, scintillating hours of TV about terminal illness, death and painfully reshaped family relationships. You wanted to give your set a standing ovation.

“thirtysomething” has the capacity to identify common denominators that transcend age and social status--the small nuances and shadings of life that connect all of us. Just as there are sometimes humor and laughter in even the saddest of experiences, these two “thirtysomething” episodes found moments of laughter amid anguish. And the tears they shed were honest and unmanipulative.

“When we selected ‘thirty-something’ for the festival, we were worried that it would go off the air,” Aronson said. Given the show’s marginal ratings, the worry was legitimate. “But we all felt it was something different and unusual and that it made an attempt to expand the medium.”

The museum took a similar chance for last year’s festival, Aronson said, picking “L.A. Law” when it was still “iffy” and “Moonlighting” before it became a hit.

This year’s Los Angeles festival also toasts “Columbo,” “Get Smart,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and other oldies. Generally, though, Aronson said Los Angeles festival audiences prefer newer TV, while those in New York seem to have a stronger sense of TV history. Hence, a festival night on “The Honeymooners,” she said, was a relative flop in Los Angeles compared to its reception in New York, where there were “lines around the block.”

Honk if you love Jackie Gleason.