TV Reviews : NBC’s Unveils Pair of Reality Series Sunday

It used to be strictly a fall event. But year after year, as television has continued to expand, so have the boundaries of its new season.

On Sunday, for example, NBC introduces a series on its fall schedule, “Secret Service,” and reintroduces another, “I Witness Video.” Early Sunday evening has been ratings-limp for NBC, and it remains to be seen whether these modestly endowed series, one a sort of weekly docudrama and the other a camcorder “reality” show, will give the network some backbone.

Airing at 7 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39, and hosted and narrated by Steven Ford, the newcomer “Secret Service” tells the “never-before-told dramatic stories inspired”-- inspired being the escape-hatch word when it comes to fudging on the truth--by actual cases of the Secret Service.

What “Secret Service” fails to do on a fundamental level is clearly define the agency it’s celebrating. Given this blurriness and the kinds of cases initially depicted, “Secret Service” could just as easily be a series about the FBI.

With Ford, a one-time actor whose father is former President Gerald R. Ford, interspersing commentary, two cases are dramatized on the premiere, the first about a “lone madman with a gun” who stalked Ronald Reagan when he was President. Just when we’re not told. What we do know is that Reagan was never assassinated, which is good for him and the nation, but a bummer for a show trying to keep viewers in suspense over a potential slaying they know never happened. No wonder, then, that the segment is an epic yawn.

The second half hour shows the Secret Service foiling an evil computer genius who caused a blackout in an unidentified major city in an unspecified year. The factual gaps encourage skepticism about the story’s veracity.

Although there is some initial mystery here over the identify of the culprit, the technologicalese is deadly: “At this rate, how long before the entire grid overloads?” To say nothing of the viewer’s perseverance.

After several telecasts last season that were dubbed specials, “I Witness Video” premieres as a series at 8 p.m. Sunday. If you saw the earlier shows, you know what to expect: Camcorder operators, most of them amateurs, videotaping the tragic and the traumatic along with showing people having close brushes with criminals and the forces of nature.

The material is uneven and tedious due to the padding of segments with repeated replays of footage. When “I Witness Video” succeeds, however, it succeeds big time, as with spectacular tape of a tidal wave, against which humans appear as mere specks, and revealing footage of “animal abuse in the name of entertainment” at a rodeo.

Says the irritated rodeo promoter about whistle-blowing animal rights activists: “The majority of ‘em are women, and they’ve henpecked their husbands so that they can’t fight back no more.” Whatever. But pictures of a rodeo bull suffering with a broken leg speak for themselves.