"Mad About You" says goodbye to a long run on NBC

Web posted on:
Monday, May 24, 1999 5:14:51 PM EST

From Paul Vercammen
CNN Entertainment News Correspondent

HOLLYWOOD (CNN) -- "Mad About You," "Melrose Place" and "Home Improvement" -- all shows that lasted at least six years -- are fading from the TV set into the sunset this week. In their heydays, they piled up big ratings, and boosted those of shows stacked around them.

"Mad About You," for example, was once part of NBC's vaunted, couldn't-be-beaten Thursday night lineup. It ends its long life in the 9 p.m. ET Monday slot. Debuting in 1992, the show made stars of Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser, who say they'll soon miss the sitcom routines.

"You know, the fact that every morning you get a script in your mailbox, that's going to stop," says Reiser, who co-created the show and played filmmaker Paul Buchman. It's the small things he'll miss, he says. "All these little pedestrian, mundane things. And the cash."

"Yeah, those two for me, too," says co-star Hunt, whose role as Jamie Buchman helped capture work in major motion pictures, including an Academy Award-winning turn opposite Jack Nicholson in "As Good as it Gets."

The cast of "Home Improvement" makes a final curtain call

Stand-up comedian Tim Allen's quirky idea for a TV show paid off. "I read the original synopsis I wrote when I was in Michigan just the other night," says the star of ABC's "Home Improvement," which made its debut in September 1991.

Someone had given him the synopsis as a gift. "That made me cry," he says. "The original synopsis, it's a clever pitch I gave them -- about your neighbor that's a guy and a tool show."

Allen, too, has risen to fame on the wings of his made-up public-access TV show, "Tool Time."

It was in 1992 that steamy "Melrose Place" helped ignite ratings for the then-startup FOX network. "Certainly they needed a linchpin on Monday," says Howard Burns, TV editor for the Hollywood Reporter. "'Melrose Place' provided that for them a long time before things started to level off a bit, ratings-wise."

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," having started its voyage in 1993, ends its syndication on more than 200 stations. Could Colm Meaney (chief of operations Miles O'Brien) jump to the younger lost-in-space drama "Star Trek Voyager" (in space since 1995) opposite Jeri Ryan's sexy and popular Borg/human character?

"It will be a while before I get into a space suit again," Meaney says. But if they make him Ryan's romantic interest? "That's tempting ... that might swing it, actually. She looks great."

Cop drama "Homicide" will not be returning next season -- despite acclaim for episodes like 1997's "The Subway," when Andre Braugher was still on the show.

While "Deep Space Nine" may be spinning away gracefully, NBC's critical darling "Homicide: Life on the Street" -- on the air since 1993 -- was canceled after failing once again to bring up its ratings. News program "20/20" and detective drama "Nash Bridges," starring Don Johnson, consistently beat "Homicide" in ratings for its 10 p.m. Friday time slot over the course of the last season.

Vincent D'Onofrio guest-starred on "Homicide" in 1997, in the show's acclaimed episode "The Subway" -- in which a man is pushed under a subway train. In a bizarre twist, the man lives, briefly. Removing him from the wreckage will kill him. The episode won "Homicide" one of the three Peabody Awards it gathered in its six-year run.

"We need substantial legitimate work on television," D'Onofrio says, "and we don't need to lose shows like that -- we need to get more of them."

Cast member Yaphet Kotto, who lives in Baltimore, says he's saddened but not surprised.

"People have been literally emotional, crying in the streets and in the stores," he told WBAL-TV in Baltimore. "This is a very emotional thing with people who are fans of 'Homicide.'"

The end of long-running TV shows isn't just a loss for those shows' fans. In fact, it's not even just a loss for the show's staff and stars. Think of the station programming directors and the network programming executives, who have to find viable replacements for former successes.

Whether you loved them or, maybe, never saw them, TV's exiting class of '99 has made a mark.