The New Shows

Westerns and private-eye shows offer escape into a world where men are men and women know their place. But situation comedies--which, this season, seem destined to outweigh saddle and sleuth operas--have a far more obscure and disturbing appeal. In their denatured apotheosis of Booth Tarkington and Clarence

Day, men invariably act like children, children act like grownups, and women act as if they owned the network. Whatever the relentless nightly triumph of the Female Principle over male boobery may prove about America's "image" of itself, it makes for slick, generally dreary entertainment. The latest samples:

Bringing Up Buddy (CBS) unleashes cascades of canned laughter that are so at variance with the vapid comedy on -the screen that the ear automatically dials out the sound in defense of sanity. The story involves boyish Buddy, a rising young executive (Frank Aletter), entrapped in the fuddled care of two maiden aunts (Doro Merande and Enid Markey) who are so naive and troublesome that they should be put out of harm's way before the series gets much older. Script credit goes to one George Tibbies, who may add a new word to show-business lingo. Entertainments of this sort are obviously not written; they are tibbled.

Peter Loves Mary (NBC) is meant to suggest that folks in show biz are just as cute, lovable and revolting as anybody else. The expertly tibbled story line about a man-and-wife comedy team has the requisite cynical children, the coy, sex-crazed housekeeper, and the jolly Broadway agent, naturally called Happy. In last week's first installment, Peter Lind Hayes, as the TV comic who cracked up over the air because his family insists on living in the strange, frightening suburbs, and Mary Healy as his wife, whose gay indifference to his suffering singled her out as a latent sadist, were charming and civilized performers. But the show is brainless.

My Sister Eileen (CBS) shows the smooth-tooling lines of a slick TV production, with every joke clicking right into place, but also overestimates the amount of new humor that can be choked from the old contest between a scatterbrained actress and her no-nonsense sister. In last week's episode, Eileen (played by Shirley Bonne) caused Sister Ruth (Elaine Stritch) sleepless nights when she invaded the lair of a panting Broadway producer. One genuinely amusing touch: in a nightmare, Big Sister visualizes the producer's office furnished entirely with couches, and flies to the rescue as Super-Ruth. Although too much depended on the belief, no longer universally entertained, that show biz holds that much peril or life in Greenwich Village that much fun, this may prove to be one of the more tolerable comedy series.

Angel (CBS) makes a long reach to Paris for a new comedy situation, introduces a French girl (Annie Farge) who comes to the U.S. to marry an American architect (Marshall Thompson). Last week more cheer than anybody had a right to expect grew out of a plot in which the young couple's home was taken over as a polling place and the heroine wanted to turn the whole thing into a party, with ruffles on the voting booths. Although the assembly line may soon run the ignorant-immigrant theme into the ground, Actress Farge triumphantly resists being merely Lucille Ball with a French accent. She is easily the brightest newcomer to situation comedy--small, pert, winsome, and somehow giving the impression of being attractively feathered.

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