Season’s Lowlights Outshine Highlights

Where have all the flowers gone?

When it comes to dramas and miniseries, television is getting to be a vacant lot, its stringy weeds having squeezed out most of its fragrant blooms. The point is depressingly made by the list of 1990-91 nighttime Emmy nominations announced Thursday by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Inconsistency is a trait shared by all of the arts, with TV’s abounding creative failures probably about par for the field. Even so, there was a time when TV annually produced classy TV movies and miniseries in sufficient numbers to fill an Emmy category and then some.

But no more. In the last few seasons, the list of highlights is getting shorter and the list of lowlights longer.

Take the current nominees vying for best dramatic/comedy special and miniseries: Two B-pluses, one B-minus and three to bemoan. The best here are the gory Showtime movie “Paris Trout” and the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” production “Sarah, Plain and Tall” on CBS, both of which were helped by Emmy-nominated performances from fine casts.

Then you step down to “Decoration Day,” another “Hallmark” production that had its moments, but. . . .

Then come the others: the blubbering NBC melodrama “Switched at Birth”; ABC’s “Separate but Equal,” an earnest, well-intentioned docudrama that buckled under the weight of its social message, and HBO’s “The Josephine Baker Story,” a biography so unevenly executed that its whopping 12 nominations spread among various categories are simply boggling.

Not that the Emmy nominators had much to chose from in this category.

A strong case could be made for including the highly worthy Fox rendition of “Robin Hood,” all but eclipsed by publicity over Kevin Costner’s Robin now playing in movie theaters. Here’s a vote, too, for the intriguingly murky BBC miniseries “Die Kinder” that ran on the PBS series “Mystery!,” plus a vote for another BBC miniseries on “Mystery!,” the chilling “Mother Love.”

And the dark, satirical BBC miniseries “House of Cards” on “Masterpiece Theatre” is an especially ironic omission at a time when the TV academy has decided to grant “Masterpiece Theatre” its Governors Award.

As good as they are, the above works are hardly TV for the ages. They are merely the best of a season that was mostly a blur.

Glaring, seemingly inexplicable omissions from the Emmy nominators are the norm in every season, and this one is no exception.

If there is any series actor who has become the TV academy’s Rodney Dangerfield, for example, it’s Ken Olin, whose work on ABC’s outgoing “thirtysomething” as sensitive, enigmatic Michael Steadman has narrowly ranged from superior to superb.

Yet, season after season, no respect.

Applaud best-lead-drama-series-actor nominees James Earl Jones for ABC’s “Gabriel’s Fire” and Scott Bakula for NBC’s “Quantum Leap.” Yet how could Olin, with performances again so subtle and detailed, not be picked over Kyle MacLachlan of ABC’s “Twin Peaks,” Michael Moriarty of NBC’s “Law & Order” and last year’s Emmy winner, Peter Falk of ABC’s “Columbo”? The latter three performed solidly, and Falk’s Lt. Columbo is a TV character for the ages. But since when does solid equal superb?

Other arguable omissions:

* Miranda Richardson, despite her intense performance as a mother swept up in a political conspiracy in “Die Kinder.”

* Diana Rigg, despite giving incredible demonic life to the psychopathic matriarch in “Mother Love.”

* HBO’s clever “Dream On,” Fox’s equally clever “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” and Lifetime’s wonderfully strange “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd” as comedy series nominees. Not that the out-of-production “Molly Dodd” was necessarily a comedy, only that it deserves mention somewhere .

* Soon-to-be-revamped “Gabriel’s Fire,” which, at its best, was among the best of prime-time drama.

Nice surprises:

* David Clennon’s supporting actor nomination for his memorable work as vile Miles Drentell on “thirtysomething.”

* John Gielgud’s lead actor nomination for his supporting performance as the eccentric father in the “Masterpiece Theatre”’ miniseries “Summer’s Lease.” The English are usually so undervalued in the Emmys that Gielgud seemed a long shot despite stealing almost every scene he was in.

The usual oddities:

* “The Simpsons,” prime-time’s flat-out funniest comedy series, not being designated a comedy series merely because it is animated. Hence, it again is nominated for outstanding animated program, a category in which writing is not specifically honored. But without its scintillating scripts, “The Simpsons” wouldn’t be “The Simpsons.”

* “The Civil War” getting only two nominations--for best informational series and best individual achievement for an informational program. That’s because, curiously, the PBS documentary for the ages was submitted only for those two Emmys, said John Leverence, awards director. Yet you could name up to a dozen it could potentially win.

Biggest mismatch:

* Among nominees competing with “The Civil War” for best informational series is the syndicated “Entertainment Tonight.” Bets, anyone?