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Suzanne Pleshette is Maggie Briggs aired from March until April 1984 on CBS.
After 15 years as a hard-news reporter, Maggie Briggs ( Suzanne Pleshette)was making the difficult adjustment to being a feature writer for the Modern Living Section of the New York Examiner. She really hadn't wanted to make the move but, out of loyalty to her friend and mentor, Walter Holden ( Kenneth McMillan), who had also been transferred, she felt obligated to give it a chance. Working on human-interest stories was quite a change from her former criminal and political bylines. With her in her new area where Sherman ( Stephen Lee), the neurotic food critic; Donny ( Roger Bowen) the religion editor; and fellow feature writers Melanie and Diana ( Alison LaPlaca, Michelle Nicastro). Her new boss, editor of the Modern Living Section , was young, straight-arrow company man Geoff Bennett ( John Getz). Maggie's best friend was sexy but flaky clothing model Connie Piscipoli ( Shera Danese)
A Review from The New York Times
TV WEEKEND; SUZANNE PLESHETTE, ACE REPORTER
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: March 2, 1984
AFTER six years of starring as the beautiful wife on ''The Bob Newhart Show,'' and after a string of made-for- television movies (in one she played a lusty madam giving up her prostitutes for salvation with a group of adorable nuns), Suzanne Pleshette is finally being given a situation comedy of her own. ''Maggie Briggs'' or, as the official billing would have it, ''Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs,'' makes its debut on Channel 2 on Sunday at 8 P.M.
Maggie is a reporter for a newspaper called The New York Examiner. On the occasion of her 15th anniversary with the company, she gets an offer to join the paper's new Modern Living section, which will attempt to ''turn around'' corporate financial troubles. Maggie, proud of her hard- news abilities, is aghast at the thought of having to do soft ''nuns and puppies'' stories.
She runs for support to her mentor and frequent collaborator, the rumpled, street-wise and cynical veteran reporter Walter, played to New Yorkese perfection by Kenneth McMillan. But Maggie discovers that Walter, tired of hustling for exclusives, has himself accepted a job in the new department.
Complicating matters, the editor (John Getz) of Modern Living is an offbeat, disarming guy who happens to be attractive, which Maggie studiously ignores (''A bland, nothing face,'' she describes him, ''and six feet below that, deck shoes.'') Before the first half-hour is over, Maggie has joined the soft-news brigade, being assured that she will keep getting the tough investigative assignments she cherishes. Only the turf has changed.
Along the way to her decision, Maggie has to cope, among other things, with a Korean martial-arts team. And every once in a while, she indulges in a bit of sentimentality. ''Walter,'' she says, ''I saw my first dead body with you.'' ''Good times can't last forever, kid,'' says Walter. The husky-voiced Miss Pleshette can make an ordinary line seem surprisingly funny, and Mr. McMillan shrewdly keeps up with her. At this stage of the situation-comedy game, ''Maggie Briggs'' is certainly a contender for survival.
Concert Telecasts Can Be an Art Form
It is sometimes a puzzle what we actually go to concerts to see ; hearing, after all, is the main focus of attention. And the 50th broadcast of ''Live From Lincoln Center,'' which can be seen on Channel 13 on Sunday at 4 P.M., with Zubin Mehta conducting the New York Philharmonic, makes the question seem still more urgent.
The 1984 cost of the Lincoln Center series is $2,409,000, and for the participating groups the value is clear; they have praised it as a form of advertising - building audiences, aiding fund-raising, increasing prestige. This concert, which took place Wednesday night, was content with offering unassuming entertainment, letting the medium be the message. Mr. Mehta leads Strauss's ''Till Eulenspiegel'' and Rimsky-Korsakov's showpiece ''Capriccio Espagnol.'' The virtuoso flutist James Galway joins the orchestra in Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp, with the harpist Marisa Robles, and presents his own amiable transcription of Rodrigo's sweetly melodic ''Fantasia para un gentilhombre.''
But a television broadcast is itself an act of interpretation, more than just a record of an event. In this case, Kirk Browning, a veteran director of performing-arts shows, does not always justify the presence of his cameras. In the Mozart and the Rimsky- Korsakov, the screen generally attends to where the soloistic action is. But in the Strauss work, the music's phrasing is often doing one thing while the cameras are doing another.
The broadcast is, in fact, a reminder that the more serious music is, the more of a challenge television faces. A telecast can be less revealing than a live concert, and more distracting than a recording. But if it is treated as an artistic form, and not just a means of reaching the widest audience, it might in our video age also have great promise. Edward Rothstein Special on Circus Offers Fear-Free Thrills
For those within hailing distance of arenas, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus will be visiting the neighborhood soon with its 114th edition. For those who don't care for the smell of tanbark or the noise and pleasant unruliness of the three-ring perennial, or the thrill of not knowing whether a mid-air quadruple somersault will succeed or end in a welter of broken bones, the circus comes to town tomorrow at 8 P.M. in an hourlong special on CBS.
Television circuses, as history indicates, have always had a certain popularity, or did have some years back. But they're usually a shadow of the real thing. This show is pleasant enough, a faithful report on the acts, the death-defying leaps, the funny clowns, the graceful calisthenics, the wild tigers submitting to a strong- looking master. With Barbara Mandrell as a most hospitable and friendly host, it takes us behind the scenes, with a photo-album sort of look at clowns putting on makeup, at a big wedding for trapeze artists, at performers telling what they aim to do.
You know that, because it is on tape, there is nothing to worry about when you see a dangerous act, but the camera conveys the feeling with shots of the breath-holding audience on the spot. The cameras, indeed, frequently cut away to countless views of wide-eyed children (one of them, however, was caught in a yawn).
It is a very amiable circus, indeed, but it is essentially a catalogue of rings to come. If you can't see it in person, this will keep you au courant. Richard F. Shepard
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