Hey, Now: A Good Lineup Beats Jet Lag

Notes from a summer vacation:

Because there are times when you just have to get away from it all, I had vowed not to read a newspaper or turn on television even once during my recent two weeks in Italy. So there I was on the Mediterranean’s Amalfi coast one afternoon, blissfully seated beside my wife on a sleek hydrofoil boat en route to Positano from Naples, via Capri, when a crewman inexplicably turned on the twin TV sets mounted inside the packed passenger cabin.

Kablooie!

As if Vesuvius were again exploding, the screens suddenly went from black to “Alf.”

“Alf” in Italian, with an awful laugh track. Instead of Paul Fusco, it was Gigi Angelligio’s goofy, high-pitched voice as the furry space alien causing havoc for his host earthling family, the hapless Tanners.

“Alf” appeared on NBC from 1986 to 1990. Its fans may recall it as a droll commentary on U.S. mores. Others, including your humble servant, recall it much less fondly.

In addition to us, the tourists inside the cabin appeared to be a smattering of Germans, Brits and Italians, and although no one laughed out loud, this captive audience appeared to be transfixed by “Alf.” One Italian woman even asked a crewman to turn up the volume.

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It struck me that a people that had produced Michelangelo, Fellini, pizza, Anna Magnani--and yes, Mussolini and the Mafia--was now tuning in and offering its visitors the likes of “Alf.” And following “Alf” on the boat TV was a program of Italian origin that made “Alf” look like a Botticelli. It featured four busty beauties in bathing suits, locking arms as they walked side by side toward the camera like a cast from one of those old MGM musicals.

What to make of it?

U.S. television has something in common with the Mafia. Thanks to global syndication (to say nothing of CNN), no matter where you are on the planet, U.S. television can reach you. And, second, art can’t be defined. It’s highly unlikely that “Alf” will be on anyone’s mind centuries from now. If it makes you laugh, however, it’s art. At least if you’re charitable.

As you can see, summer vacations and profound thoughts are not necessarily compatible.

Yet all of this buzzed in my brain when, still jet-lagged by the return flight from Rome, I arose wide-eyed without an alarm shortly before 3 a.m. Tuesday and popped in a cassette of tonight’s return of the globe’s smartest, funniest, greatest comedy series, “The Larry Sanders Show” on HBO. Sistine, shmistine. Now this is art.

The jokes, not the jet lag, kept me in stitches.

This is season four of “The Larry Sanders Show.” As always, Garry Shandling’s late-night talk-show host is an unruffled smoothie in front of the camera, a neurotic head-case when the red light goes off. He goes to pieces tonight when his show books Roseanne, with whom he had a romance at the end of last season. But we learn that she dumped him and, typically mortified by confrontation, he can’t face her.

As always, too, Larry’s TV sidekick, Hank (Jeffrey Tambor), is self-obsessed and self-serving, and his producer, Arthur (Rip Torn), is a manipulative pragmatist. As always, his talent booker, Paula (Janeane Garofalo); assistant, Beverly (Penny Johnson); and head writer, Phil (Wallace Langham), are the show’s backup choir of cynics.

And, as always, “The Larry Sanders Show” operates straight-faced in a zone of topicality and near-reality. That means a lethal-tongued stint by Roseanne that plays off her reputation for crudeness and nastiness. That means a funny cameo for Chevy Chase that finds him demeaning his own storied failure as the great late-night hope for Fox.

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This self-flagellation by guest stars on “The Larry Sanders Show”--they willingly depict their reported eccentricities and the negative sides of their reputations while playing themselves--has long been a remarkable defining trait of the series that buffs its sheen of authenticity.

And speaking of authenticity, a nattering subtext of tonight’s episode is the O.J. Simpson double murder trial, from Larry’s monologue to a takeoff on the blood evidence to the opening sequence, which finds Larry watching the live trial telecast during a staff meeting called to hash over ideas to freshen his show. Should they book Kato Kaelin? Hank laments that the real victims of the murders have been forgotten. It seems that he, too, lives in Brentwood on Rockingham, and the case has driven down his property values.

Meanwhile, Paula rags on Larry for once bumping O.J. Simpson as a guest for “Murphy Brown” regular Faith Ford. The wounded Larry responds: “Who knew he was going to get this hot?”

It may be just a coincidence that there’s a reference on “The Larry Sanders Show” to a patient in therapy uncovering a repressed memory of childhood molestation by an uncle. That happens to be the theme of tonight’s season opener for “Dream On,” the once-great, still-great-in-spots comedy series that precedes the Shandling series on HBO.

Although its humor is often universal, “Dream On” is still a heterosexual male fantasy. Brian Benben’s sexually prolific Martin Tupper remains an amusingly frustrated New York literary editor who encounters his greatest works in bed. But tonight his inability to perform sends him to a bizarre therapist (Louise Fletcher) who persuades him that his sexual problem stems from a childhood incident.

Next week’s second episode has Martin coming on to an old classmate (Annette O’Toole) who isn’t interested because she has the hots for Martin’s ex-wife, Judith (Wendie Malick). Some of it, especially the petulant Martin’s consternation, is very funny. No one does consternation better than Benben.

Better still is the third episode, which opens typically, with Martin’s knockout girlfriend breaking up with him even as they’re in the thralls of passion. For the voyeur, it’s gloriously gratuitous. More to the point, this is a buddy break-up half hour, as Martin is devastated when his best friend, Eddie (Dorien Wilson), moves to Los Angeles for his big shot in prime time. Eddie, an African American, is to play a single father who adopts a white child in a sitcom called “Salt and Papa.”

The male-bonding theme is stunningly funny at times, and the patch-up between Martin and Eddie artfully balances wit and poignancy.

Who’s to say why slightly sanitized reruns of “Dream On” have been such a weak draw on Fox? Wrong time slot? Wrong audience? Whatever the case, “Dream On” still occasionally packs a roundhouse, and I’d rather be watching it than “Alf” on a boat in the Mediterranean.

* “Dream On” airs at 10 tonight, followed by “The Larry Sanders Show” at 10:30, on HBO.