Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Good Sports: Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett

Good Sports aired from January until July 1991 on CBS.

Gayle Roberts ( Farrah Fawcett), was totally unprepared for the shock of Bobby Tannen ( Ryan O'Neal), entering her life for the second time, twenty years after a weekend fling in college that she had never forgotten and he couldn't remember. Over the intervening years, she had gone from being a supermodel to carving out a career for herself as a talented , hardworking sports journalist. Bobby, a star football player in college and later with the Green Bay Packers had not been so fortunate. Relying on his football skills and good looks could only take him so far, especially since he wasn't to bright and had a temper that constantly got him into trouble. Bobby was desperate for a job when blustery, egocentric, R.J. Rappaport ( Ted Turner with a Texas drawl played by Lane Smith), the cable television magnet gave him an on-air tryout co-anchoring " Sports Central" on his cable network ASCN ( All Sports Cable Network). Rappaport liked having the ex-jock around and liked the sparks that flew between Bobby and Gayle on the air-caused by her resentment of Bobby's obvious lack of reportial skills and the fact that he had totally forgotten their college relationship. Bobby really wanted to make good and sought her help , eventually falling in love with her and proposing to her.

Others seen regularly in this spoof of tv sports programming were Jeff Mussberger and Missy Van Johnson ( Cleavant Derricks, Christine Dunford), ACSN's other featured reporters; Mac MacKenney( Brian Doyle-Murray), the harried producer who agreed with everything Rappaport said; Leash ( Paul Feig), the watchdog hired by Bobby's mother to try to keep him out of trouble; and Nick Calder ( William Katt), Gayle's boyfriend who went nuts after she dumped him and started to show real interest in Bobby. Additionally, a number of real sports personalities showed up, primarily as comic interview guests on ASCN's " Sports Chat." Among them were Kareem Abdul -Jabbar, Lyle Alzado, Jim Brown, Bruce Jenner, George Steinberger, George Foreman, and Pete Rose.

Besides it's big name stars, Good Sports offered lots of sly little spoofs of television and celebrity. In the opening each week an elegant Bobby swept glamorous Gayle away in a dance sequence worthy of Astaire and Rogers-then absentmindedly left her hanging from a chandelier; during the episode itself, characters would wander over to the nearby set of RJ's comedy network ) like Ted Turner, R.J. ran lots of cable networks)-the Rap-HA-port Network-where a standup comic would pitch one-lners at them from the stage as they tried to sort out their problems.

A Review from USA TODAY

TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH

Farrah and Ryan make a winning combination

Foxy Farrah Fawcett and roly-poly Ryan O'Neal-love means never having to say you're unemployed.

But would that all Hollywood amour could result in sizzling silliness on the scale of Good Sports, which is great fun.

This long-time couple bring substantual glammour to the lightweight lunacy of squabbling sports anchors at a delightfully cheesy cable station.

This is a star vehicle of the highest order, designed to showcase its talents in a way that makes everyone look like they're having a grand time.

As Gayle Roberts, a former supermodel ( Sports Illustrated covers) who takes her sportscasting career very seriously , Fawcett looks and sounds sensational. Her biggest problem will be to keep from becoming an unmitigated shrew.

Not easy when the scripts pit her so nastily against O'Neal's adorable " Downtown" Bobby Tannen, a fadded football pro reduced to pizza delivery hack as the series opens.

Those who recall his light touch in What's Up Doc? won't be surprised at how agreeable O'Neal's eagerness to please is-even as Gayle sabotages him on the air and fires withering glances at his bumbling.

Beyond the love-hate contrivances, Good Sports works as a spoof of fawning jock talk ( with hilariously stiff cameos by athletes like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and of cheapskate cable operations. Lane Smith gives smooth support as a Ted Turner-like cable impresario.

Some elements are depressingly flat-Brian Doyle Murray as an unctuous producer, Lois Smith as Bobby's clinging mother-but generally the writing is sharp and the leads are sharper.

The nifty opening credits, a hot black-tie tango of choreographed pratfalls, bills the stars as " Farrah Fawcett vs Ryan O'Neal." Not a chance.

They may bicker, but their affection and tandem joy are clear and contagious . They make a winning team.

A Review from Entertainment Weekly

TV Review
SPORTS" REPORT
FARRAH FAWCETT AND RYAN O'NEAL SQUARE OFF AS A PAIR OF TV SPORTS ANCHORS IN CBS' GOOD NEW COMEDY. ITS REAL-LIFE OVERTONES ONLY ENHANCE THEIR ON-SCREEN DUET.
By Ken Tucker

Good Sports (CBS, Thursday, 9:30-10 p.m.) is a small triumph of packaging. This sitcom pairs Farrah Fawcett with Ryan O'Neal, a couple favored by the tabloids in real life; their show features prime time's best theme song (soul great Al Green in his funkiest performance in a decade) and the best opening credits (O'Neal in a tux, Fawcett in a tight black cocktail dress, alternately tangoing and wrestling on an abandoned dance floor). The show itself? Pretty good, quite shrewd, and very intriguing. Fawcett is a sportscaster for a cable sports network; when her co-anchor dies, she's teamed with O'Neal, a former pro footballer fallen on hard times (his previous job was delivering pizza). Their lines are sharp, and each is perfect-Fawcett, self-absorbed and sleek; O'Neal, self-parodying and pudgy. Fawcett has spent so many years proving her credentials as a serious actress that it's fun to see her relax into comedy. Right now her character is rather stiff-necked-she disapproves a bit too strenuously of O'Neal's rowdy sense of humor and lack of professionalism. But this is less Fawcett's problem than the writers'-they have to find a way to allow her to loosen up, to use that toothy smile and sex-symbol image to convey both warmth and humor. O'Neal, on the other hand, has found himself a great character. As down- and-out Bobby Tannen, he's completely convincing; he carries his bulkiness with the surprising grace of an ex-athlete. Then, too, O'Neal is savvy enough to know that, to a certain extent, he's being used-when we watch Ryan O'Neal play a once-famous figure gone to seed, we can't help but think of the actor's own stalled movie career. O'Neal, to his credit, seems to relish making fun of his real-life dilemma. As Bobby, he whines, ''I really want this job!''; in a recent TV Guide interview, he claims he sold Fawcett on the notion of doing the show by pleading, ''I need this. I need this.'' If Good Sports is a hit, O'Neal may finally get the credit he deserves as a skilled light comedian, a side of his personality he'd previously displayed only in What's Up, Doc? (1972) and the underrated So Fine (1981). But Good Sports doesn't succeed on star power alone; there's also a solid cast of supporting characters. Lane Smith, extraordinary as Richard Nixon in The Final Days miniseries (1989), is terrific as a huffy, Ted Turner-ish cable channel owner; Brian Doyle-Murray is satisfyingly subtle as the show's obsequious producer. So what's bad about Good Sports? Just the premise: We're supposed to think that Fawcett and O'Neal hate each other on the surface and have the hots for each other just below it. But isn't this Will They Do It? question precisely what hobbled shows such as Moonlighting and Anything But Love? If the couple in question doesn't get together, the series is in danger of becoming a tiresome tease; if they do, the suspense dissipates. How the show will resolve this problem remains to be seen. In the meantime, here is a sitcom that creates a beguiling new genre: the goofily erotic. B+

A Review From Time Magazine

Big stars cannot redeem bad sitcoms. This season has already brought us Burt Reynolds sleepwalking through the overrated CBS comedy Evening Shade. Now Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal have set back their careers about 10 years (three for her; seven for him) by fronting another grueling CBS entry, Good Sports. Fawcett plays Gayle Roberts, a veteran anchor for an all-sports network run by a Ted Turner-like mogul. O'Neal is "Downtown" Bobby Tannen, an ex-football star fallen on hard times, who is brought in to be her on-air partner. Their bickering, Moonlighting-style relationship is signaled none too subtly in the opening cast credits: "Farrah Fawcett vs. Ryan O'Neal."

TV shows set in TV newsrooms represent a low ebb of creative imagination, but Good Sports may set a record for ineptitude. Creator Alan Zweibel (It's Garry Shandling's Show) flicks in a few satirical jabs at TV, but mostly he seems tuned to another channel. The characters are so woozily out of focus that after two episodes one still can't tell whether Bobby is supposed to be simply naive or mentally retarded. Or why Gayle, the TV pro, keeps having spats with him in front of a nationwide audience. Or why, when he rents an apartment directly opposite hers, she doesn't at least draw the shades. Or why . . . awww, never mind.

Here is Lane Smith's Obituary

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
By Myrna Oliver
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 15, 2005

Lane Smith, the actor who portrayed President Nixon in the 1989 docudrama "The Final Days" and apoplectic Daily Planet editor Perry White in the 1990s television series "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," has died. He was 69.

Smith died Monday at his Los Angeles home of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease, his family said.

A veteran stage actor with scores of character parts in film and television, Smith achieved instant fame when he took on the role of Nixon in the production based on the book "The Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Smith's performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

Although he had been acting for three decades when he was cast as Nixon, Smith told Newsday when the show aired that he considered the role "a tremendous career break."

"It's an actor's dream to play something like this," he said. "I consider this my masterwork."

The program itself generated controversy with Nixon supporters labeling it a "smear," and Nixon critics saying it was too sympathetic to the fallen leader. But Smith won critical praise for capturing the physical gestures, mannerisms and what he considered the Greek tragedy of the only U.S. president forced to resign in disgrace.

Newsweek called Smith's portrayal "a towering performance" and said: "This docudrama is a one-man show, and perhaps the most incandescent ever to ignite the tube."

And Newsday said Smith "is such a good Nixon that his despair and sorrow at his predicament become simply overwhelming."

"The Final Days" greatly enhanced Smith's reputation.

"Playing Nixon gave me tremendous recognition," Smith told United Press International a year after the docudrama aired. "I'd long been known in the business, but it pulled everything together. Finally people could put the name Lane Smith with my face."

In 1991, he landed regular roles in two short-lived television series, as cable television mogul R.J. Rappaport in "Good Sports" starring Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal, and as suitor for star Teri Garr's mother in "Good and Evil."

In short order, he also played a hockey coach in the highly popular "The Mighty Ducks," a politician in Eddie Murphy's "The Distinguished Gentleman" and a lawyer in "My Cousin Vinny," all released in 1992.

And then along came Superman.

Smith had been a regular on other series, including the title character's mentor in the 1986 medical drama "Kay O'Brien" and a corrupt industrialist aiding menacing aliens in the 1985 sci-fi series "V." But "Lois and Clark," which starred Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher and ran on ABC from 1993 to 1997, would be his most enduring employer.

In the updated take on the caped crusader from Krypton, White's favorite expression changed from "Great Caesar's ghost!" to "Great shades of Elvis!" and the editor spewed Elvis trivia.

Smith was born in Memphis, Tenn., on April 29, 1936, and grew up wanting to act.

He studied drama for two years at what is now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh before dropping out for a two-year Army hitch. He later moved to New York to study at the Actors Studio.

Smith made his off-Broadway debut in 1959 and acted in several plays on and off Broadway.

Notwithstanding the Nixon role, his real career break came in the late 1960s when he played Randle Patrick McMurphy for 650 off-Broadway performances of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Better roles followed, and he went on to play characters as diverse as artist Modigliani, writer Jack Kerouac and dictator Adolf Hitler.

Smith earned a Drama Desk Award for his role in David Mamet's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross" in 1984.

The actor made his motion picture debut in 1970 in Norman Mailer's "Maidstone," and in 1978, he moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on film and television work.

His first motion picture starring role came in 1988 when he played the warden in "Prison" with Viggo Mortensen.

Smith is survived by his wife of four years, Debbie, and his son from a previous marriage, Robertson.

For the Official Website of Farrah Fawcett go to http://www.farrahfawcett.us/

To go to a few pages with lots of pictures of Farrah Fawcett go to http://www.hissandpop.com/celebrities/f/farrahfawcett/ and http://www.geocities.com/farrahfawcett2/pictures.html

For a website on all the latest news from Farrah Fawcett go to http://www.topix.net/who/farrah-fawcett

For a website dedicated to Ryan O'Neal go to http://www.meekermuseum.com/roneal.html

To watch the opening credits as well as some other 1991 TV shows go to http://youtube.com/watch?v=mfkdwjGfP3c&feature=related