TV REVIEWS : Lurid ‘Stranger’ Good for Some Laughs

Nowadays when TV tries to get provocative, it nearly always has an artful veneer. But whatever happened to unabashed sleaze? Whatever happened to sordid Hollywood stories where the male lead gets to survey a room of bimbos and make snarling pronouncements like “Any woman here tonight ought to be grateful to jump into my bed”?

Never fear: Such archaism makes a hilarious comeback Sunday with the Sidney Sheldon production “A Stranger in the Mirror” (at 9 p.m. on ABC, Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42). It’s as lurid as anything on TV in the ‘90s yet still manages to feel as if it were made in the ‘70s, which is apparently the last time its creators were much in touch with reality. So what better recommendation are you waiting for?

Perry King stars as comedian Toby Temple, a goofball who arrives via bus to conquer Hollywood with all the enterprising savvy of Jethro Bodine. Before you know it, Toby’s slicked himself up and slept and finagled his way to the pinnacle of superstardom, earning his own hit TV variety show and a Time magazine cover on the basis of what is plainly the world’s worst stand-up act.

He’s not a nice guy, but meets his match in equally conniving Jill Castle, played by Lori Loughlin. She at least starts off small-town sweet, but her innocent demeanor shifts after she comes to Hollywood and gets drugged into being an unconscious porno movie lead. Next thing we know, she too is sleeping a path through the studio system, a black widow who has her sights set on marrying Toby--starting by getting rid of his faithful agent, Christopher Plummer.

Which is more implausible: the idea that unwitting Midwestern virgins are actually raped on-camera as a matter of course in your average Pussycat Theatre fare, or that there might actually be a successful variety show on network TV in the modern era?

But who’s keeping score? As scripted by once-respectable Stirling Silliphant (“In the Heat of the Night,” “The Swarm”) from producer Sheldon’s novel, and directed by Charles Jarrott (“The Other Side of Midnight”), “A Stranger in the Mirror” is a minor riot any way you add it up. The cast unashamedly aids and abets this musty camp: King turns in the hammiest performance this side of Porky, Loughlin is cast against type as the very picture of despoiled virtue, and Plummer has panache to spare as the most fearsome creature in L.A., a wronged agent.