The Comfort Years : Sensing a national mood for simpler values in hard times, the networks line up three new series that hark back to the ‘40s and ‘50s

The series is called “Homefront,” and it will deal with triumphant GIs returning from World War II when it becomes part of ABC’s prime-time lineup this fall.

In the pilot episode designed to sell the show to ABC, the opening sequence begins with an American flag filling the screen. We see a newspaper headline that says: “War Ends.” A woman narrator tells us, “In the autumn of 1945, America was invincible. . . . The counter tops at the soda fountain were still made of marble. Sodas cost a nickel. And coke? Well, it only meant cola.”

The series’ co-creator, Lynn Marie Latham, noting that the opening may be changed, says it had a purpose: “We wanted to give them (ABC) the feel.” And a pop song of the period, “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” made famous by Harry James and his band, socks home the point throughout the sequence.

Is TV’s new network season going to be, none too subtly, a fond, sometimes rose-colored remembrance of better times in the aftermath of the Gulf War? Not entirely. But we will be getting three new weekly series which, while vastly different, hark back to the 1940s and ‘50s with themes that represent for many viewers not merely nostalgia but also moments of significant national triumph and comfort.

“Reaffirmation of American values is the key phrase here,” says Les Moonves, president of Lorimar TV, which is producing two of the three period series, “Homefront” and NBC’s “I’ll Fly Away,” a one-hour drama that is clearly a significant attempt to deal with the early days of the civil rights movement through the eyes of a 1950s Southern family and its young black housekeeper.

The third series, “Brooklyn Bridge,” is a half-hour comedy-drama from CBS that concerns a 1950s family living in a Brooklyn apartment “when the Dodgers played in Ebbets Field and licorice was a penny a twist.” Adds CBS: “It is the story of a family and an era when neighborhood streets were safe, doctors made house calls and the door was always open to friends and neighbors.”

The show, which is only now being cast, is from producer Gary David Goldberg, whose “Family Ties” series captured the absorption with material success in the ‘80s through its central character, Alex Keaton (Michael J. Fox).

“There’s no question that America right now is at a high point,” says Moonves, adding that both “Homefront” and “I’ll Fly Away” “make us feel good about America.” While Joshua Brand, co-creator of “I’ll Fly Away,” notes that “the civil rights movement has changed the course of history and in many ways changed nothing,” Moonves says of the new shows:

“They are reaffirming a good feeling, pride. I think all three shows may be trying to get into that. A year ago, I don’t think the networks would have been as receptive. A year ago, shows like ‘Cop Rock’ and ‘Twin Peaks’ (both now canceled, along with ‘thirtysomething’ and the Vietnam drama ‘China Beach’) had a harsher reality to them. ‘I’ll Fly Away’ and ‘Homefront,’ while dealing with problems, take a more positive view. I think America is much more ready for these shows than maybe it would have been a year or two ago.”

Those who opposed the Gulf War may well be offended at what seems an attempt by a show like “Homefront” to capitalize on the recent military victory, but polls have shown that about 80% of Americans approved of Operation Desert Storm. In fact, “Homefront,” previously titled “1945,” was in development before the Gulf War.

All three of the new period series clearly stem from different creative intentions. But TV executives, psychologists and ad agencies suggest that, in addition to finding receptive networks, they come as many viewers are seeking more than merely Gulf War victory parades: They are looking for simpler, old-fashioned values as an antidote to crime, drug use, pollution, soaring prices, the recession, the greed-oriented ‘80s and insecurity about the nation’s future.

“I think there’s going to be a shift in the next couple of years away from hard-core, in-your-face, cancer-ridden drama on television,” says Brandon Stoddard, president of ABC Productions. “I think that people would like to come home and watch a television show that lifts their spirits but also underlines their capacity to control their lives and destinies--programs that show the possibilities of human beings.”

The comfort factor is, in fact, obvious elsewhere in the networks’ fall schedules as familiar old stars--James Garner, Redd Foxx, Carol Burnett and Robert Guillaume among them--are being brought back in new weekly programs.

“When you look at all three networks, it is interesting to note the three period series,” says Peter Tortorici, senior vice president for program planning at CBS. “In challenging times, people are looking for hope. These stories are hopeful shows about coming through challenging times and being relatively happy about who we are. When times are tough, you want something that makes you feel good about facing the future with hope, rather than looking back to a time you were ashamed of in some way.”

It hardly seems an accident that two fine drama series dealing with Vietnam, in many ways America’s most painful war, now are gone, as the networks have dropped not only “China Beach” but, before that, “Tour of Duty.” In what is either a coincidence or a cynical piece of scheduling, ABC is running out its episodes of “China Beach” in the Tuesday slot that will be taken over by “Homefront”--the bad-news war being replaced by the era of the good-news war.

Brand, who with his partner John Falsey has created such series as “St. Elsewhere” and “Northern Exposure,” says that “I’ll Fly Away” is “not an attempt to go back to an idyllic past. We’re not interested in doing ‘Happy Days.’ ” But, he adds, the civil rights era represented “an honorable struggle. Pride is not too strong a word. By doing a family show, it was like putting a family under what (former President Jimmy) Carter called the moral equivalent of war.”

“I’ll Fly Away” stirs memories of the much-admired 1962 film “To Kill a Mockingbird,” for which Gregory Peck won an Oscar as a small-town Southern attorney who defended a black man charged with rape. Brand agrees--”We loved ‘Mockingbird’ “--and his new show stars Sam Waterston as a Southern attorney. But, says Brand, “there was no black point of view” in “Mockingbird,” and he adds: “What we’ve tried to do is present the black point of view, and that’s as much a class point of view as a racial point of view.”

“Homefront” also deals with racial inequality in its pilot show as a returning black GI hero can only get a job as a janitor at a factory before his father uses influence to move him up to the production line. The show likewise tackles the inequality toward women--when those who filled in at the factory during the war are forced to resign to assure the returning GIs of jobs. Thus does “Homefront” mix in worthy themes that are still relevant today.

Yet, in its handling of war brides in the running story, the series is also a shrewd concoction that some might place in the category of soap opera. David Jacobs, who created “Dallas” and “Knots Landing” and is one of the executive producers of “Homefront,” says, however, that his new show will not be a soaper.

To many viewers, the overall theme of “Homefront” will recall the great, nostalgic and Oscar-winning 1946 film, “The Best Years of Our Lives,” which also concerned returning World War II veterans and their adjustments to civilian life.

“The postwar Gulf period may have helped us, and maybe it will turn against us,” says Jacobs of the series, which was created by Latham and her husband, Bernard Lechowick. “We’re taking great pains not to exploit the Gulf War. There may be a comfort factor, but the idea is to do the show accurately.” Adds Jacobs, whose “Dallas” series offered the quintessential TV representation of 1980s greed, J.R. Ewing:

“I get sick of our own time, our attitudes, our jargon, and I think maybe we all have after the last 20 years of self-indulgence. It’s liberating to think about how people thought about the same things when self-indulgence was not tolerated. After World War II, all these guys wanted to come home, buy a little house and start a family. After the ‘80s, where you just had to have all those toys, I think we want to do the same kind of things--more basic concerns rather than just the acquiring of goods.”

Goldberg says he simply wanted to draw on his life for “Brooklyn Bridge”: “I was looking at my roots and how did I get from there to here. It came from my daughter who is 8, who was fascinated as I described the old neighborhood and lifestyle, and every night she’d say to me: ‘Tell me a story about Brooklyn, Daddy.’ She loved the fact that we all lived together, one on top of the other in an apartment building, and that aunts and uncles were down the street.

“It would be deadly to dwell on nostalgia. But there was something comforting and manageable. In a small way, almost a tribal way, you knew where you belonged and to whom you belonged. And the world was very small, maybe three blocks.”

Responding to summaries of the three series, Dr. Irene Goldenberg, a family psychologist at UCLA, says: “I think it’s back to a kinder, gentler time--not necessarily that it was a kinder, gentler time. But the family structure was definitely intact. There’s a change in structure--working parents and so forth. So people want to go back to a pretend time when you could leave the door open and neighbors were friendly.

“I think they were not such wonderful times. The ‘50s were repressive, a conformity period, a bad time for women, but there was peace. There wasn’t our kind of speeded-up life. They were not easy times, but we remember them fondly because of the family structure.”

Those who recall the ‘50s with a rosy glow--as presented on TV’s “Happy Days”--might also remember that it was the decade of the late, witch-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

To USC psychologist Chaytor Mason, “We are living in a world of threat, so we have nostalgia--people feeling that, ‘God, I wish it was like then.’ People collect old games, baseball cards and toy trains as part of a retreat to a past which we have lived through and which doesn’t produce anxiety. I teach at Norton Air Force Base, and I notice a lot of nostalgia. Old war stories you wouldn’t dream of telling a few years ago--well, people say, ‘Tell us more.’

“I think maybe parents haven’t told their children enough of the past, and TV presents a lot of documentaries and other shows about that time. It whets the appetite for young people who want to know more about it. Each of us would dearly like to know more about our parents and how they lived.”

At the McCann-Erickson advertising agency in New York, executive Joel Segal agrees that “there’s a trend toward nostalgia among younger people,” also citing baseball cards as an example. And with the three period TV series on tap this fall, he adds:

“The late ‘40s and ‘50s were a happier time for many people. The networks are also trying to stay away from violence and vulgarity--they don’t want to offend advertisers. And if they’re faithful to the decades that they’re presenting, people were not publicly vulgar. You don’t have to have something like that in shows like ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ or ‘Homefront,’ so it’s comfortable from that point of view.”

Another advertising executive, Betsy Frank, of the Saatchi & Saatchi agency in New York, thinks “Homefront” is frankly “trying to capitalize on whatever warm fuzzies we may be feeling in the post-Gulf War era. ‘I’ll Fly Away’ looks like a quality drama. And I think ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ is there because CBS is just delighted to get a series from Gary Goldberg. It’s the one he wanted to do. So what are you going to tell him--’Be more contemporary’?”

Noting that “nostalgia is performing well on cable”--in the form of old movies, old TV shows and such services as the Nostalgia Channel, which constantly keep the past before us--Frank says, “It’s not surprising considering the changing demographics in the country. So having series set in the ‘40s and ‘50s may appeal to core viewers, 35 to 54 years old, the group now identified as having most of the disposable income in the country.

“The networks never tire of telling us that we advertisers are targeting too young and that we should try to reach a more mature audience because there’s more disposable income. But they do the same thing.”

Clues to the appeal of the past have come on the networks as well as on cable. The big tip-off was a CBS special last year about the very first “I Love Lucy” episode. It was a blockbuster hit, pulling 37% of the audience. Then, last February--during the Gulf War--CBS presented a smartly conceived package of retrospectives of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” all of which did well in the ratings.

The retrospectives may have helped influence CBS to present current Sunday night, prime-time reruns of “All in the Family,” which began June 2--once again with good ratings. And CBS is reported considering other retrospectives of its past hits, perhaps including “MASH” and “The Bob Newhart Show.”

It is no accident, says Perry Simon, executive vice president of prime time for NBC entertainment, that the TV movie “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” with Glenn Close, and the Western miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” with Robert Duvall--both steeped in old-fashioned values--were also smash hits.

“The Gulf War is patriotism,” Simon says, “but that’s not what I’m talking about. The audience is saying, ‘Just give us someplace where we can celebrate some of the positive American values that we’re striving for.’ There’s an appetite there, but the wrong way to go about it is in a simplistic, saccharine program. It’s not like we haven’t had ‘Happy Days’ and ‘The Waltons’ and ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ ”

Says CBS’ Tortorici: “Someone said on ’60 Minutes’ that the ‘90s are the decade of reckoning. And in such a time, values are out in front. We’re looking for affirmations that things will work.”

In the same vein, Stu Bloomberg, executive vice president of prime time for ABC Entertainment, says of “Homefront” and the post-World War II era: “Here was a time of only possibilities. All of the dreams of the men and women coming back seemed attainable.” Bloomberg says of the series, “I felt we might need it.”

The three period series may be the start of something, or another sharp jolt to the audience-hungry networks if their feel-good programming is swiftly rejected by viewers. The Gulf War and the parades celebrating it “may wear thin at some point,” Jacobs concedes.

Because of its difficult subject matter, “I’ll Fly Away” could be the biggest gamble of all. But its two principal characters, Waterston as the district attorney and Regina Taylor as his family’s black housekeeper, might well come to epitomize the best intentions of a nation seeking to right its course and pursue higher aspirations, with the growing civil rights movement providing the background. Describing the two characters, co-creator Brand says:

“She finds herself having feelings that she’s not sure how to express. She wants to become something that she’s not particularly sure of. She feels trapped by her role in society. He, meanwhile, also finds himself somewhat trapped. He wants things to change but stay the same. Both want to hold onto their own world but are uncomfortable with it. So they are, in a sense, both sides of the same coin, trapped by society’s expectations of them.”

This is hardly the stuff of simplistic nostalgia, easily pigeonholed--but there is decency in the air.

“There is in the world today,” says Roderic Gorney, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, futurist and author of “The Human Agenda,” “a degree of dread that we may have outlived our string on this planet through our own foolishness, which we don’t seem to be able to control. And the result of it may be the extermination of our species. Everywhere people turn, there is this harbinger of decay--pollution, the airwaves, the propaganda we’re fed.

“Everybody realizes that whether you believe the Desert Storm war was a true protection against aggression or an effort to assure the United States of uninterrupted oil supplies, corruption lies at the bottom. I do think that the result of the sense that the world is corrupt and teetering is that everybody harks back to times when things were hopeful, like defeating Hitler and coming home.

“If you mean by nostalgia to include such things as regularity and hope--that if you do what’s right in the world, you will be rewarded--then I think that nostalgia is the right word.”