TV REVIEWS : ‘Spy Magazine Hit List’ Full of Merry Malice

The quality of smugness tends to work better amid the impersonality of elegant font on the printed page than on screen with a smirk and an overbearing laugh track. Nonetheless, “The Spy Magazine Hit List: The 100 Most Annoying and Alarming People and Events of 1992” (at 10 tonight on NBC, Channels 4, 36 and 39) is nearly as funny a TV special as it is a magazine spread, with actual film clips of Quayle, Perot, Schwarzenegger and the usual Spy suspects inevitably compounding the merry malice.

Some of the “awards” involve skits of a sort: To illustrate annoying event No. 51, “Duets With Dead People,” Wayne Newton shows up to sing alongside Janis Joplin, thanks to the miracles of video technology, on “Ball and Chain.” Annoyance No. 49, “Capitol Hill Studs,” uses vintage footage of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill at the hearings, but with “Studs” host Mark DeCarlo doing the bawdy interrogating.

Other anti-plaudits, however, involve unaltered film clips: Just the sight of Dan Quayle reciting the verse of Ice-T, Monica Seles grunting, Jessica Hahn hosting the “Love Phone” infomercial or Charles Barkley elbowing minuscule Olympic rivals is amusing enough, sans commentary.

Highlights include host Julia Louis-Dreyfus suggesting a public post-office vote between “the original fat Oprah, thin Oprah, or finally, the Oprah-fat-again stamp.” Harry Shearer, doing a great Casey Kasem, counts down some of the more truly alarming items, including African famine, the federal debt and--”making a surprise re-entry at No. 5”--ethnic cleansing. Mary Tyler Moore, David Alan Grier and Ren & Stimpy are also guest presenters.

Spy can’t wax too righteous in recognizing the rip-off: The “Spy 100,” after all, owes a considerable spiritual debt to Esquire’s “Dubious Achievement Awards.” But in times as trying as these, there’s certainly enough annoyance and alarm--and enough “Achy Breaky,” Amy Fisher and Arnold--to go around for everybody.