Saturday-Night Special : Burnett Anthology Series Adds Firepower to No. 1 Network’s Lineup

NBC has spent a lot of time promoting its new sitcom “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” But some real TV royalty, Carol Burnett, may well be more valuable in keeping the No. 1 network on its ratings throne.

Burnett’s half-hour comedy anthology, “Carol & Company”--which debuted March 31 and was an instant hit--has its new-season premiere tonight at 10. And the way things are going, it could be part of a trio of back-to-back series--”The Golden Girls,” “Empty Nest” and the Burnett show--that holds the key to NBC’s success in coming years.

Burnett, eternally youthful and buoyant, entered the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for a 90-minute interview the other day wearing a well-worn, blue denim jacket embroidered with theatrical mementoes, a short blue denim skirt and a simple orange shirt. She came alone--no accompanying publicist. The essence of simplicity--as usual.

The truth is, she hates it when her show is described as an instant hit--”It disturbed me as much as saying something’s a flop after three weeks”--because it tells her how TV has changed:

“I really do notice this immediate judgment--’It’s great’ or ‘Let’s bury it.’ If that was true, my old series (the 1967-79 ‘Carol Burnett Show’) wouldn’t have survived. We weren’t a hit until after our third year. But if they believed in something, they gave you a chance. Now they’re so quick to judge everything, and I don’t like that at all.

“Nobody wants to fly by the seat of their pants anymore. They’re more careful. They were so careful about this anthology idea. They almost had to be forced into it. I think because it was Matt Williams (who previously created ‘Roseanne’) and because it was me and because it was Michael Eisner (chairman of Disney, the studio that makes the show), this issue was forced.”

Indeed. “Carol & Company,” which has averaged 28% of the TV audience, arrived with the odds stacked against it--except for a good lead-in from “Empty Nest.” Burnett liked the anthology idea, and so did Eisner. But the form was dead in network TV--with ratings failures in recent years including Steven Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” and revivals of “The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”

At times, Burnett sounds like a voice in the wilderness. She knows networks are terrified that straight musical shows will die, but she blithely keeps going her own way: “My idea of heaven would be to get Angela Lansbury and Tracey Ullman and me just to do a special together--just sing and kick up our heels. Tracey is probably the most versatile performer we have today. She’s the best.”

Burnett’s not bad, either. And her importance to NBC is suddenly magnified as the network’s Thursday lineup faces the possible end of “Cheers” and the aging of “The Cosby Show.”

What’s more, “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” starring rapper Will Smith, isn’t yet anywhere near the ratings hit that NBC thought it would be; in fact, it’s struggling. That all gives a lot of importance to “The Golden Girls,” “Empty Nest” and “Carol & Company.”

“But it’s hard,” Burnett says of her anthology series. “It’s like doing a 22-minute pilot a week. It’s from scratch every week.”

And that unpredictability--and unevenness at times--is what keeps it intriguing. It’s a real TV risk. Tonight, for example, Burnett plays what NBC calls a “sex-crazed senior citizen.”

“She’s not,” Burnett says with a laugh. “Well, she’s a little horny. But so was my grandmother. In fact, when my grandmother--who raised me--died at 81, she had a 40-year-old boyfriend who was a jazz musician over in Redondo Beach.

“But you know where this idea came from? We sit around the table and we spitball ideas. And Marcia (co-producer Marcia Brandwynne) started talking about the infantilization of senior citizens in some retirement homes, where people keep apart seniors who might have a crush on each other. And then there are their middle-aged children, who treat their parents as if they’re infants. So I’m an 82-year-old woman who flirts and has boyfriends in this home. It’s a valid premise.”

And it’s part of an encouraging transformation on Saturday nights. Suddenly, the 10-to-11 p.m. Saturday time period--normally the lowest-watched network hour--has an intriguing lineup. ABC will offer “Twin Peaks” in that slot this season. CBS has Dan Rather’s “48 Hours” newsmagazine starting tonight. And NBC has Burnett followed by “American Dreamer,” a new Robert Urich sitcom with possibilities.

Burnett’s not happy being against “Twin Peaks.” She’d rather appear on it: “Yeah. And it’s opposite us. I mean, that’s awful. I love that show. I hope they move it. If we’re canceled, I’m going to be at (producer) David Lynch’s door so fast.”

But now that Burnett’s back in weekly harness, she has her own production company gearing up as well--including motion picture plans for her published memoirs “One More Time” and her old Broadway hit and TV special “Once Upon a Mattress,” based on the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea.”

“The second draft of ‘One More Time’ is being written now,” Burnett says. “We’re in an agreement with Barry Levinson (director of ‘Rain Man’). It would really be about the relationship between the three generations--the little girl, me, from say about 11 to 19, and my mother and grandmother. It’s about these three females living together in Hollywood, a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from the Hollywood dream.

“My mother came out here from Texas wanting to be a writer--she wanted to interview celebrities, and she worked at Fox for a while. She and my dad were divorced. And we lived in a one-room apartment at Yucca and Wilcox. And it’s about that.”

There’s a possibility that Burnett might play her grandmother--”if I thought I could. I don’t know that I can. I don’t know.” Would she play any other part? “No.”

Burnett smiles as she remembers her grandmother: “Oh, she’d steal stuff from Thrifty’s. She’d steal napkins and salt-and-pepper shakers and flatware--she had this big purse like Mary Poppins. And then we’d go see the movies--we’d see eight movies a week on Hollywood Boulevard. And we’d go to the john, and she’d steal all the toilet paper and put it in her purse. I mean, we were on welfare. She was a hoot, that one. She knew how to survive.”

Professionally and personally, Burnett is clearly a survivor too. In the past, she says, she had “buffers.”

“I had Garry Moore when I was on his TV show. And on the Burnett show, Joe (her former husband Joe Hamilton) produced it and had to handle whatever else was going on.” She never had to deal, she says, with those gray business eminences she calls “The Suits.”

But now, she says, she’s leaning on herself more: “For one thing, I’m not married to the producer anymore. And for another, it’s a whole different age for women. I was the little woman and came in and did my stuff. Joe did encourage me to come to meetings. But I didn’t want to because there was no way I could say to somebody, ‘I don’t really like this sketch.’ I just couldn’t do it. I would hem and haw and be embarrassed and think that I was being tough.

“Now I’m able to say, ‘I’m not comfortable in this.’ And I’m not killing anybody by saying it. And I’m not emasculating anybody. The best thing is to be honest. So I’ve been learning to speak up.”