Saunders: 'Comeback' deserved one

Monday, August 7, 2006

Raise your hand, please, if you wanted The Comeback to come back for a second season.

My instincts tell me the response will be limited.

HBO didn't renew this innovative comedy series last fall after its 13-week freshman run, saying audience response was minimal. But The Comeback lives on, much to the joy of its relatively small fan base, which should be aware of the recent release of the one-season DVD and Lisa Kudrow's Emmy nomination as best actress in a comedy series.

For me, The Comeback qualifies as a guilty pleasure and a strong nominee for cult TV honors. Kudrow's performance as Valerie Cherish, a fading sitcom star attempting a TV comeback, remains a profile to cherish on a series that deserved a longer run.

In this era of burgeoning infotainment where celebrity is slathered all over the TV screen and on the Web, The Comeback, in brisk, sardonic style, offered a dark yet comedic take on Hollywood life from the perspective of a former sitcom star, now foundering on the cusp of middle age.

Valerie Cherish was trying to survive in an environment where the massive egos of blond look-alikes regularly collide like bumper cars in an amusement park. Created by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King (Sex and the City), The Comeback chronicled the often-bizarre attempts of Valerie, billed as the "It Girl" when starring in her own comedy series a dozen years before, to return to the TV spotlight via two avenues.

She agreed to be the centerpiece in a reality series about a former star attempting a comeback, while actually attempting one during the filming of a new comedy series called Room and Bored.

The former co-star of Friends was brilliant as an actress with limited talent trying to survive and retain her dignity in the show-business jungle.

Valerie signed on to the new comedy series, believing she was going to be a somewhat older sexy single living with a group of younger actresses. To her dismay, she discovered she was cast as an older aunt living upstairs away from the action being generated by the young women.

Scenes of the young, slimy TV producers trying - and often succeeding - to schmooze Valerie crackle with realism. Valerie's inability to bridge the show-business age gap gave The Comeback an honest, dark-comedy sense of Hollywood reality.

ALUMNI REPORT: Bill Dallman, former news director at Fox31, and Jeff Passolt, who had a brief career as a sports anchor on 7News in the mid-'90s, have teamed in Minneapolis.

Dallman, who became news director of Fox-owed KMSP-TV in late May, has created a 10 p.m. newscast, with Passolt as weeknight co-anchor.

A SPECIAL TV ZONE: Old and rejected science-fiction projects don't fade away. They end up on cable's Sci-Fi Channel.

Executives have announced that they've picked up Star Trek: Enterprise, Tales From the Darkside and two Stephen King miniseries, The Langoliers and The Stand, for future showings.

Also scheduled for the fall are reruns of The Threshold, a well-received but low-rated CBS series from last season.

And last but certainly not least, Sci-Fi will continue to program episodes of Rod Serling's revered The Twilight Zone.

NEWS NOTES: KBDI- Channel 12 will air a taped gubernatorial debate among Bob Beauprez, Bill Ritter and Dawn Winker at 9 p.m. Friday. This is the first of several "Colorado Decides" debates to be featured on the public TV outlet during the political season.

• Roger Wolfe, 9News' northern correspondent for 22 years, will retire Friday after spending 40 years in the news business.

• CNN has hired Alina Fernandez, estranged daughter of Fidel Castro, as a network contributor. Fernandez, never close to her father, was there when Castro assumed power 47 years ago. A writer and broadcast personality in Miami, Fernandez left Cuba in 1993 disguised as a tourist.

QUOTABLE: "I think I'm going to be dead and buried before The Simpsons ever gets removed from our air." - Fox Entertainment President Peter Ligouri, who, in his late 40s, looks trim and fit

TODAY'S NOSTALGIA: On Aug. 7, 1963, ABC News aired Picture of a Cuban, a Focus on America documentary about a Cuban family that had relocated to Miami.

Dusty Saunders is the broadcasting critic. Saunders@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5137