“Diagnosis Murder”
Tonight at 9 on WCBS/Ch.2
IF you’re going to stab someone in the back, it helps to be close to them.
No one in television is safe tonight when “Diagnosis Murder” decides to poke fun at the business and the vicious competition it faces.
Someone seems to be trying to kill the Masked Magician (Val Valentino), the anti-illusionist who has kicked the ratings butt of “Diagnosis” on more than one occasion. When Doc Sloan (Dick Van Dyke) and Det. Sloan (Barry Van Dyke) try to figure out why, they learn that TV is even worse off-screen than they think it is on-screen.
This two-hour special is a grayer “The Player.” And an absolute howl, thanks to sharp dialogue and a slew of cameo appearances by a lengthy list of folks who’ve gotten a bit long in the resume.
Lee Goldberg – who shares executive producer credits with Fred Silverman, the legendary “golden gut” at more than one network before he turned producer of gray-haired drama lite shows such as “Matlock” – gleefully employs his insider knowledge of the wacko business.
There’s GBS, recently bought by a bottling company and which can’t get arrested, much less watched on Thursday night. It is dominated by silly comedies on UBC and mayhem-oramas on Pox.
GBS is now ruled by a man (Pat Harrington) who looks more or less like CBS’ Les Moonves. Its programming is run by a woman (Carol Alt) who is as extravagantly coiffed as ABC’s Jamie Tarses.
At Pox, the man to see is Jerry Mathers, who is in fact too old to play an executive at Fox.
The man (Tony Dow) at MBC, which thinks shock reality is the bandwagon to hop on, is named Debono, which might be a nod to Vin Di Bona, whose “Funniest Home Videos” breathed new life into the genre.
Which brings us to the star of this two-hour show: Stephen J. Cannell, who is in real life a very successful producer (“The Rockford Files,” “Wiseguy”) but who ought to be starring in his own show. Cannell goes way over the top and hits the mark as Jackson Burley, a producer of many coats and malaprops.
“You never know which way lady luck is gonna spit,” he explains to Mark Sloan (Van Dyke). “You just hope it’s not in your breakfast.”
But when his second attempt to turn Sloan into a TV show loses its star to death, Burley’s ham and eggs get wet.
He can’t even get a good table or service at the hot eatery in Hollywood.
“Even Jessica Fletcher couldn’t spot me over here,” Burley whines.
That’s just because Jessica’s head would be spinning at seeing more seldom-seen guest stars than in a whole season of “Murder She Wrote.”
Ian Ogilvy (“St. Eleswhere”) plays the randy star of “He’s My Husband.” Gary Sandy (“WKRP in Cincinnati”) is an executive with a killer instinct. Billy Warlock (“Days of Our Lives”) as the actor who will make the character of Mark Sloan his own by adding an “e” to Sloan.
Danny Bonaduce pops up as a GBS exec who describes former CBS star Cybill Shepherd as “a proven commodity.”
That’s TV-speak for what Burley calls “carne muerte.”
