TV REVIEW : Savalas Back as ‘Hollywood Detective’

Telly Savalas had a hit TV series as an intrepid investigator. In a new movie for the USA cable network, “The Hollywood Detective” (tonight at 9), he plays an actor who had a hit TV series as an intrepid investigator.

At one point, he gets beat up. Savalas, with a nose much like a small potato, fears that it’s broken. Tenderly, he squeezes it and puffs it up and whines, “I love my nose.”

This assignment steps on Kojak and grinds him into the ground.

It’s a comic turn. “John Crown, Private Investigator” has long died and gone on to that Great Syndicator, and down-and-out actor Harry Bell is attempting a final denouement. But a zany Lois Wednesday (played by a fetching Helene Udy) shows up and insists that Harry really is John Crown and can find her missing boyfriend.

Executive producers Robert Papazian and Jim Hirsch, director Kevin Connor and writer Christopher Crowe throw Harry into a silly plot about murder, mayhem and a Medfly infestation. But Savalas does silly very well and, while there is more silly than needed, it’s a diverting little piece.

In the close, hero Harry is inundated with acting offers--but he and crazy Lois make a great detecting team. Maybe. . . .

Savalas’ “Kojak” returns to the TV boards Nov. 4 as part of “The ABC Saturday Mystery Movie” cycle. Could he play Kojak and Harry Bell at the same time? Isn’t that double jeopardy?