TV Reviews / THE NEW SEASON : HBO’s ‘Running Mates’ Funny but Serious, Too

What could be more timely than “Running Mates,” a light, blithe, romantic comedy with serious undertones, in which a presidential candidate’s fiancee becomes the source of a scandal just as he’s entering the homestretch of a heretofore effective campaign?

With Diane Keaton as the fiancee and Ed Harris as the senator who would appear to have the White House within his grasp, the film (at 8 p.m. Sunday on HBO) sparkles like a Tracy-Hepburn picture.

Keaton quickly rebels against the expectations of Harris and his team on the campaign trail--shades of Hillary Clinton early on--but give-and-take between Keaton and Harris is finally beginning to prevail when a completely believable incident from Keaton’s past surfaces, involving an anti-Vietnam film. It should be of no consequence, but it’s perfect ammunition for the opposition.

What director Michael Lindsay-Hogg and writer A. L. Appling accomplish so deftly is to show, through the conflicting ideas of how a First Lady should behave, the larger issue of the evolving role of women in American society. You can’t watch “Running Mates” without being reminded of a political commentator’s recent remark that Barbara Bush is certain to be the last traditional First Lady. “Running Mates” was supposed to have been a theatrical production timed for the 1988 presidential elections, but when it fell through, Keaton, to her credit, stuck with the project. “Running Mates” does have the feeling that it has been shoehorned into a 90-minute slot, which means that its unfolding seems so speeded up as to make the story seem unreal. Even so, Keaton, Harris, Russ Tamblyn and Ed Begley Jr. bring to the film a big-screen quality.