TV Reviews : The News About ABC’s ‘Capital’ Isn’t All That Good

Wow! This is a newspaper:

There’s action at every turn. Every story is thrilling, great sources fall into your lap and every investigation pans out. You don’t have to worry about being scooped by TV news or even another newspaper. When you do finally get around to writing, the clicking of your word-processor keys is accompanied by exciting music. And just look at those female reporters: All lookers!

Are you watching, you budding young journalists? Forget about the glamour of TV. Here is excitement. Here is where reporters’ lives are “caught up in the turbulence of daily news gathering.”

Unfortunately, The Washington Capital is not taking applications just now. It’s the Washington paper depicted on the new ABC series “Capital News,” premiering at 9 tonight on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42. What an incredible place this is, and what a fantasy.

The credits list executive producers David Milch and Christian Williams as having written this recruiting film, but you suspect it was really Janet Cooke. Not that dramatists aren’t entitled to take some liberties to heighten interest, only that “Capital News” goes over the edge. If tonight’s two-hour pilot were an actual newspaper story, any competent editor would have killed it after reading the first paragraph.

Come back, “Lou Grant.”

Lapses in authenticity aside, there are only two even somewhat interesting characters in “Capital News.” One is editor-in-chief Jo-Jo Turner (Lloyd Bridges). The other is ace national reporter Mary Ward (Kathryn Harrold), who is having an affair that could compromise her blockbuster expose. Meanwhile, her anonymous source for the story has the hots for her.

Just about everyone else here is comical. Through the turbulence of daily news gathering, we glimpse hard-charging, pain-in-the-rear-but-phenomenal metro reporter Redmond Dunne (William Russ) and his new sidekick, Anne McKenna (Helen Slater), who is getting a heart-thumping initiation her first day on the job after arriving from San Diego: “I dreamed of my first day on this paper, working hard and getting good assignments, and maybe even distinguishing myself, and instead I end up involved with assault and battery before lunch and I’m way behind on my Page 1 story.” But kids, don’t you try this at home.

There’s more: Gossip columnist Miles Plato (Kurt Fuller) does his own syndicated television show out of his newspaper office. Seemingly washed-up China correspondent Alexander Streeter (Lee Richardson) tries to recharge his career in a black slum. Clay Gibson (Michael Woods) works in his shirt-sleeves because he’s metro editor, and Edison King (Mark Blum) wears a three-piece suit because he’s national editor.

As a serious drama, this gets even funnier as Dunne, McKenna and two other colleagues share a house, dormitory style--reporters living together and reporting together. But the absolute best comes when Dunne’s word-processor shorts out and goes up in smoke as he’s writing on deadline. Unfazed, he moves to another one. Meanwhile, “Capital News” goes up in smoke.