BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Whoopee! It's Whoopi!
Whoopi Goldberg takes the center chair in the new Hollywood Squares, one of three new weekday syndicated series premiering today:
Hollywood Squares (7:30 p.m., Channels 5, 22): The actress-comedian sits in the hallowed center seat in TV's tic-tac-toe game show held by late Paul Lynde in the 1970s.
"I don't want to work as hard anymore. I really don't. I want to have fun," said Ms. Goldberg, explaining why she chose a daily TV show over a weekly TV series or feature films.
"And they offered me a really beautiful amount of money," she said of King World, which also produces Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.
Joining her inside the tic-tac-toe matrix this week are Rosie O'Donnell, Kathy Najimy, Rita Rudner, Jeffrey Tambor, Andy Dick, Mark McEwen, Enrico Colantoni and Squares head writer Bruce Vilanch, who provides celebrities with funny answers to host Tom Bergeon's trivia questions.
Contestants "win" a square by determining whether Ms. Goldberg and the celebrities are answering questions truthfully.
"Either I lied to you or I didn't. It's kind of like Washington by night," Ms. Goldberg joked.
"The thing about this show is anybody can play it. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to play this game."
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to predict that millions of viewers will check out the new Hollywood Squares, which was not made available for preview. So viewers must trust that King World, given it's TV game show history, can successfully revive the popular game show, which aired 14 years (1966-80).
Certainly the star power on the 1998 version is greater than previous Square comebacks with John Davidson, Shadoe Stevens, Jim Bullock and Joan Rivers (1986-89).
But sometimes TV's biggest names (Bill Cosby) can flop with seemingly fail-safe formats (Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life). Which brings us to Roseanne.
The Roseanne Show (3 p.m., Channel 5): The comic whose ABC sitcom was No. 2 to The Cosby Show tries her hand at a daytime talk show.
Many TV critics (myself included) have bad vibes about this, from Roseanne's inability to articulate how her show fits into the daytime spectrum ranging from Oprah Winfrey and Rosie O'Donnell to Jerry Springer. In July, she didn't appear to have a clue.
"It's kind of a little bit of everything. We'll be a little bit like Oprah, and a little bit like Rosie," Roseanne told TV critics in July.
Asked to name three possible show topics, she could name only one -- parenting.
"It's very, very important to me to do a show on raising children as normal people in kind of a crazy world, teaching children about responsibility," said Roseanne, 45, the mother of five (ages 4 to 27).
Scheduled to appear on Roseanne this month are Lily Tomlin, Ellen DeGeneres, Dennis Rodman, k.d. lang, Patti LaBelle, Reba McEntire and Ms. Goldberg.
A recent wire story about a taping with Mr. Rodman, the flamboyant NBA star, offered a glimpse of how Roseanne can mix issues and antics:
When Mr. Rodman refused to take off his hat, she snatched it from his head. Moments later, she surprised Mr. Rodman by talking about how he paid for the burial of James Byrd Jr., a black man who was murdered when three white men allegedly dragged him and dismembered him in a racially motivated attack. Then she brought out Mr. Byrd's two sisters to thank him.
So maybe she has found a groove. But given her knack for imploding, I don't have high hopes for The Roseanne Show. (Neither does Channel 5, which has Jenny Jones at 2:05 a.m. ready to replace Roseanne in an instant.)
Judge Joe Brown (10:30 a.m., Channel 19): Also on today's docket is the presiding Superior Court judge in Memphis, Tenn.
His producers, who also make the Judge Judy show, stress that tough-talking Mr. Brown is different because he's "the only active criminal court judge in the courtroom (TV) series genre."
The judge, a tall heavy man, puts it this way: "Judge Judy is prettier than I am . . . Mayor Koch (of The People's Court) has been a mayor. I've never been mayor, (and) he's never been a presiding judge, and we both have a show."
As for Judge Mills Lane, the Nevada judge and boxing referee whose show premiered in August (10 a.m., Channel 19), Mr. Brown says: "He's a welterweight and I'm a heavyweight, if we weighed in on the scales."
Mr. Brown promised his law show "will enlighten the public. We'll make them think. And you'll also get some entertainment." But we'll be the judge of what TV shows succeed and fail.
John Kiesewetter is Enquirer TV/radio critic. Write him at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, 45202.
