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CHANNEL SURFER: Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees!
CHANNEL SURFER: Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees!
By
Steve Harper
, Hollywood.com Staff
|
Sunday, June 25, 2000
HOLLYWOOD - It’s Monkees Week at Channel Surfer, and frankly, it’s not a minute too soon. First up, VH-1’s venerable “Behind the Music” finally gets around to the story of the “pre-fab four” today at 9 p.m EDT/PDT. This tale marks the beginning of the time-honored show-biz tradition of a bunch of suited executive types recruiting a group of fresh-faced lads and manufacturing a singing group that would leave thousands of screaming teenagers in its wake on the way to (briefly) becoming the biggest thing going.
Sound familiar, Backstreet Boys? Heard this one somewhere before, 'N Sync? Still, “Last Train to Clarkesville” does rock, and Mickey Dolenz does “rule over everything!” No one is arguing about that.
Monkees Week continues Wednesday at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT when VH-1 premieres its original movie “Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story.” In a nice piece of irony, here, a new crop of fresh-faced young lads were brought in by a new breed of casually dressed executive types to pretend to be pretending to be rock stars.
Neat, huh? That would make them the Pre-fabricated Pre-fabricated Four or, as the kids would say, PFPFF. But they probably won’t call themselves that. “MonkeeZ” has a ring to it, should they decide to take it on the road.
It’s not that there is a shortage of good television on this week. Don’t be ridiculous. It is simply due to our solemn pledge to keep you up to date on any new developments in the continuing UFO Crisis currently plaguing our planet that we bring you information on “MSNBC Investigates -- The Search for UFOs” (today at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT).
This is a new show, not one of the hundreds of rerun and repackaged UFO docs seen, well, pretty much every night on other cable channels. MSNBC promises that you will “find out how new research tools separate science fiction from science fact.” OK, whatever, as long as there’s plenty of grainy footage, spooky music and wild speculation, we’ll be happy. By the way, MSNBC is often not mentioned in a lot of TV listings, but you probably have it. Just flip around until you see something that looks “unexplainable.” That will either be this show or yet another new vehicle for RuPaul.
Peter Jennings delivers a thought-provoking two hours of investigative journalism as he undertakes “The Search for Jesus" (Monday at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT on ABC). Jennings takes an open-minded trip through the Holy Land, searching for matters of both fact and faith. And he recruits a wide range of opinions and perspectives from archaeologists, historians and religious scholars, getting their varying interpretations of the evidence at hand. It took 2,000 years, but finally somebody is stepping up to clear this whole mess up. Hopefully, the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews will ease up on shooting one another over this subject long enough for Peter to figure out what that guy was talking about. Maybe then we can all get some sleep.
And finally this week, from the producers who brought us the bittersweet (but mostly sweet) 1997 movie “Soul Food” comes a new series of the same name (Wednesday at 10 p.m. EDT/PDT on Showtime). And if there was ever a movie that screamed out to be made into a series, this might be the one.
It’s a dramatic comedy (running 45 uninterrupted minutes per episode) about an extended black family in Chicago, centering around three very different sisters. Maxine (Vanessa Williams -- no, not Vanessa L. Williams, ex-Miss America and current Mrs. Rick Fox, from the movie -- the other Vanessa Williams) is a happily married mother of three. Bird (Malinda Williams) struggles with a new baby and an unemployed husband. And Teri (Nicole Ari Parker) is a very successful lawyer who can never find the right man. They all get together on weekends to help sort out the entertaining messes they’ve each made of their lives. Also, if the soundtrack for each episode plays like the one in the movie (produced by Babyface), this show could become a Wednesday night habit.
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