CBS books hip `Hotel Malibu'; drippy `Waikiki'
Waikiki. Malibu. If it's Thursday, this must be desperation, CBS style. With a new fall season just around the corner, CBS is taking a late stab at establishing a beachhead of pure summer fluff with two short-run tryouts. What they prove: Some escapes are greater than others.
(One West Waikiki stuff deleted.)
HOSPITALITY SWEET: "I saw Donna Mills do this on Knots Landing," says scheming maid Romy Walthall as she gamely carts a dead body through the hallways and elevators of Hotel Malibu (###, tonight, 10 ET/PT). Harmless, painless and completely weightless, this is the latest and least ambitious diversion from Homefront-Second Chances creators Lynn Marie Latham and Bernard Lechowick, who honed their craft during Knots' best years.
Emphasizing light humor over soapy self-seriousness, Hotel Malibu is 100% more inviting than the summer's other new prime-time serial, Fox's gloomy fashion victim Models, Inc. The good guys (including Homefront's Harry O'Reilly as a mensch of a bartender) are pretty weak, and the initial intrigues at this posh family-owned resort are mostly familiar: Bad son (John Dye) wants to sell, and the wayward good daughter (Cheryl Pollak) doesn't, while widowed mom (Joanna Cassidy) heads for the martinis. Still, the writing has snap, and token bad girl Walthall (Civil Wars) shows promise of living up to the Donna Mills model: having a good time doing bad things. You might have reservations about wasting your time on material so slight, but of its effervescent ilk, this Hotel gives awfully good service.
USA TODAY, 08-04-1994, pp 03.