Television Review

Blue Notes

Imagine that. First they steal our music, and fall all over one another trying to sound Delta like a bunch of Canadians, after which they hit us over the head with their anti-American guitars. It was, of course, more complicated. So is everything more complicated. Which is why we sing the blues.

Fiftysomethings now, The Boys of 2nd Street Park (Sunday, September 28; 8 to 9:35 p.m.; Showtime) grew up mostly working-class Jewish in Coney Island in the sixties. They were, many of them, basketball heroes in high school until they met Boys High in the playoffs. They would graduate, most of them, to college, and a few to Vietnam. They would, maybe a third of them, get lost in drugs. A couple lost children, and you don’t want to hear them talk about it but can’t turn away, either. Our own failures of health and character, we can posture in front of; the death of a child turns us into amateurs—no style. And after they have explained the arc of their careers to the camera, they show up again to shoot some hoops in the old park. Not all of them are as spontaneous as we might hope, but no deaths have been reported.

Dan Klores and Ron Berger were among these Brooklyn boys back then, though they chose not to interview themselves. Instead, they tracked down some 25 classmates, recorded 80 hours of film, ended up concentrating on six guys who seem, through clever cutting, to be talking to one another even before the huffing-and-puffing reunion. There is even a woman, with her own story, not so sad. Somehow, out of materials that seem at first routine, there appears bewildering art.

I’m With Her (September 23; 8:30 to 9 p.m.; ABC) tries hard to make us care about the Notting Hilly romance of high-school teacher David Sutcliffe, who isn’t Hugh Grant, and world-famous Hollywood glamour-puss Teri Polo, who isn’t Julia Roberts.

How Do You Spell Murder? (September 24; 7 to 8 p.m.; Cinemax) goes inside a New Jersey state prison to see what prisoners are doing—tutoring, high-school-equivalency programs, poetry workshops—about a 70 percent illiteracy rate. We meet, and have to think about, one inmate who signed a confession he couldn’t read.

Miss Match (September 26; 8 to 9 p.m.; NBC) stars Alicia Silverstone as a divorce lawyer who discovers a talent for introducing the right people to each other, which leaves her working both sides of the matrimonial fence, neither much of a help with her own romantic life. This new series gets a longer-than-usual look-see from me just because—even if Ryan O’Neal does play her father—Silverstone can do no wrong.

Hope & Faith (September 26; 9 to 9:30 p.m.; ABC) asks soccer mom Faith Ford to put up with celebrity sister Kelly Ripa upon Kelly’s disemployment when her soap-opera character is killed off. So it’s the visiting blithe spirit vs. the resident control freak—and blonde dread all around.

10-8 (September 28; 8 to 9 p.m.; ABC), with Danny Nucci as a former Brooklyn bad boy who joins his police-detective brother, Michael Rispoli, in Los Angeles as a deputy trainee sheriff under the fulminating guidance of Ernie Hudson. Some are predicting an early demise for this series, probably because it’s heartwarming instead of blood-chilling.

The Lyon’s Den (September 28; 10 to 11 p.m.; NBC) is what Rob Lowe has decided to do with himself instead of The West Wing, which involves practicing idealistic law in wheeler-and-dealer Washington, D.C., where Matt Craven, Kyle Chandler, Elizabeth Mitchell, Frances Fisher, James Pickens Jr., and David Krumholtz are also mostly fraught. Very slick, and never funny.