A Channeling of Voices From Beyond the Grave

Dead people talking ... and walking.

Bad is one thing, but this week television gets really putrid. It starts tonight on ABC when George Anderson’s chitchat with the dead includes Robert Blake’s slain wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, and continues Sunday when Ted Danson--as James Van Praagh--talks and even runs away from the dead on CBS. You just have to be there when spooks pop from the ground at night and chase him through a forest.

Anderson’s special is “Contact: Talking to the Dead,” the Van Praagh miniseries “Living With the Dead.” This is living? Well before the final credits roll, you’re the one feeling dead.

Along with the Sci-Fi Channel’s John Edward (“Crossing Over”), Anderson and Van Praagh are mediums who make fancy livings claiming to chat up the departed. Now I’m not saying these showmen are grifters who don’t actually talk to the dead. As someone who would welcome life after death, I hope they’re sincere. I’d love to be dialed up by one of them at a much later date, although I’m warning my family now, I’ll entertain no questions about TV in the afterlife.

It’s just that I’d like it better if they contacted dead people from whom we could all benefit. Is there a statute of limitations on deadspeak? How about sounding out some of the Founding Fathers on whether they believe the U.S. Constitution they drafted in 1787 should be obeyed word for word in 2002? Or Marilyn Monroe about those rumored close-ups with Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and if she really took her own life. Or Moses: C’mon, now, the Red Sea really parted? Or George Custer: What were you thinking? Or Edward R. Murrow: How much time do you devote each day to twisting in your grave? Or Aristotle? Or Billie Holiday?

And yes, all right, Jack the Ripper: Who are you really, and are you and your victims now getting along better?

Somehow this seems a bit beyond Anderson, whose program is hosted by former CNN anchor Jim Moret (“Later ... the murdered wife of Robert Blake speaks out”), who appears to have misplaced his circumspection when cleaning out his news desk.

This special was taped before Blake was snapped up by Los Angeles police Friday and accused of his wife’s murder. With Anderson as he “speaks” to Bakley are her sister and her mother, who hopes to hear “a clue that no one has picked up on.” Fat chance, for Anderson says Bakley chooses not to explore “the circumstances of my death” because “the souls, out of love, know exactly what we need to hear.” Oh, sure.

That means these souls--who obviously are not dead prosecutors--are taking Anderson off the hook as far as revealing who killed Bakley. The sister says she and her mother don’t care because they already know the slayer’s identity. Sure, but what about us?

Anderson tonight does “cold” readings--in which he’s said to be unaware of who his subjects are in advance--also with Mackenzie Phillips, whose late father was lead singer with the Mamas and Papas; “Wheel of Fortune” letter-turner Vanna White, who hears from her dead boyfriend; and pro wrestler Brett “The Hitman” Hart,” whose deceased brother and mother check in from the beyond.

“Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say,” Anderson tells Hart, “but your mom’s just showed me a scene from [the movie] ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.’” Hart is blown away. It’s his favorite flick? No. He had seven brothers.

Obvious question: Why doesn’t his mother just say that instead of giving this private movie screening? Obvious question No. 2: Why is she telling Hart he had seven brothers in the first place? He already knows.

Not to worry, though, because a good, teary time is had by all. Especially as all of Anderson’s miscalls about these dead folks have been erased by editing, making it appear he’s always 100% right.

If Van Praagh didn’t exist, meanwhile, Stephen King would have invented him. CBS says its miniseries is “inspired by the life and work” of Van Praagh as recorded in his memoir, “Talking to Heaven,” but you don’t need a Ouija board to figure out that “Living With the Dead” is a title with greater box-office zip. Or that short-ish, round-ish Van Praagh in real life looks and acts nothing like the tall leading man playing him in “Living With the Dead.”

And does he ever live with them in this story written by John Pielmeier and directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal. As a kid, Van Praagh meets another boy who’s been dead 30 years. While he’s visiting his dying mother in the hospital, his dead grandmother appears. While he’s shopping in a supermarket, his dead mother appears. During a session with his therapist, the man’s dead wife enters, gobbles some pills, then dies again. And of course, there are those murdered boys who haunt him in the forest, as the muttering, tormented Van Praagh is pushed to the limit while talking to the dead the way Russell Crowe talks to Ed Harris in “A Beautiful Mind.”

“I don’t know who sent you, but would you please go away,” he pleads with an ever-present dead teenager. Although Van Praagh is a reluctant hero, it’s these dead sightings that have him solving a homicide and a serial murder case that introduce him to a police detective, played by Danson’s wife, Mary Steenburgen.

There’s a bit of suspense at the end in addition to some tear-jerky manipulation regarding a serious illness. Suffice it to say that the serial murderer is mad, do you hear, MAD! But if you can’t predict the corny outcome of a search for a missing boy who’s still alive, then you don’t know the difference between stories on broadcast networks and those on HBO and Showtime.

Van Praagh not only predicts the future in this story--something the real Van Praagh has never claimed to do--but also inserts himself into the body of someone alive. Uh huh.

This is not the Van Praagh I recall. He did not appear to be living with the dead when giving me a personal reading in his West Hollywood home for a column I was writing about him in 1994. He did chat with my dead stepfather, but mentioned nothing about using his ability to crack murder cases. Nor are these feats mentioned in his biography on his Web site.

Because they’re fictional.

Although CBS advertises this as Van Praagh’s story, Danson says it really isn’t, insisting that he is not actually playing Van Praagh. Just someone else with Van Praagh’s name? The curious thing is that CBS felt it couldn’t complete this fib in one night, so it’s taking two. The real Van Praagh (who appears here briefly as a church organist) seems not to mind the deception, which after all adds to his luster as he plans for a TV series he has in the works.

George Anderson says on ABC tonight that when he first realized he had his unique ability, “I did not know what to do with it.” Now he and Van Praagh know exactly what to do with it.

Make money!

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“Contact: Talking With the Dead” will be shown tonight at 10 on ABC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).

“Living With the Dead” will premiere Sunday and Tuesday nights at 9 on CBS. The network has rated it TV-PG, with an advisory the second night for violence.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg @latimes.com.