In the TV contest some might call “Testosterone vs. Estrogen,” testosterone is the sure winner. It’s virtually impossible to compete against ABC’s “Monday Night Football,” but this season CBS has put together a formidable lineup–aimed directly at a female audience. It’s risking a new drama, “The Trials of Rosie O’Neill,” and giving it a boost by leading in with two established sitcoms, “Murphy Brown” and “Designing Women.”
New crop: Though “Rosie O’Neill” is shaping up as an ensemble show, it’s a star vehicle for Sharon Gless as a newly divorced, 43-year-old lawyer who has given up a tony Beverly Hills practice to defend both the honorable disenfranchised and the scum of L.A. “Monday nights are a real roller-coaster ride,” says Barney Rosenzweig, who developed and produces the show. “The good thing is that the expectation level is low: nobody expects you to win. " To date, Rosenzweig’s baby is ranked No. 40–not a ratings dazzler but CBS’s brightest light. Among this season’s record 33 new series, it ranks fourth; it’s the top-rated new dramatic show on any network and No. 1 of CBS’s entire new crop. Though Rosenzweig would rather see “Rosie” on Sundays, where he thinks it would be a bigger draw, the current slot has sentimental value: it used to be filled by his last show, “Cagney & Lacey,” also starring Gless.
Notable for its consistent high quality, “Cagney” was TV’s first female buddy show. As with “Rosie O’Neill,” early ratings weren’t great; but when CBS ordered a first-season cancellation, fans organized a protest. In 1983 “Cagney” became a network Lazarus, the first series to be resurrected due to viewer pressure. In its six-year history it earned 14 Emmys; between them, costars Gless and Tyne Daly won all the best-actress awards. That “Rosie O’Neill” has gotten on the air at all is some” thing of a miracle. In 1988, after CBS’s third and final cancellation of “Cagney,” Gless swore off series: six seasons of playing police detective had worn her down. Rosenzweig was equally loath to return, in part because he had invested so much of himself in “Cagney,” especially his liberal political sentiments. The show’s end, he says, was like a death in the family. It also meant he no longer had a voice. “They gave me 46 minutes every week to say what I wanted to say. I never called the people who watched ‘Cagney & Lacey’ my audience, I called them my constituency and when I lost that it was like losing the presidency.”
Gless–whose relationship with Rosenzweig is personal as well as professional– was the first to change her mind. “I really am a worker bee,” she says. “I really did want to act. I like belonging somewhere.” Eventually, she persuaded Rosenzweig to join her in a comeback. After a 45-minute power breakfast last April, CBS’s new entertainment president, Jeff Sagansky, gave “Rosie O’Neill” the go-ahead, but only as a replacement show: he didn’t think Rosenzweig could be ready by September. He was wrong. After CBS’s Connie Chung suddenly announced that she was scaling back to try to have a baby, “Rosie O’Neill” made an unexpected (and pilotless) September debut. The producer had promised he could deliver a “Cagney & Lacey” audience, not record numbers but a hard-core, dedicated group of women 30 and older, upwardly mobile. “I believed I could let those people know we were back and that they’d show up for the party,” he says. “What I was talking about was not broadcasting but narrow-casting. I don’t make top-10 shows.”
Comic moments: “Rosie O’Neill” is still evolving. Despite its rough edges, it’s emerging as intelligent and thoughtful. If the show is a bit preachy on occasion, it also offers wonderful comic moments (as when Hank Mitchell, O’Neill’s office mate, gives a file to a health-nut colleague only after he agrees to eat a disgusting coconut-covered cupcake). O’Neill’s clients have included a man accused of desecrating a Jewish cemetery and another of killing his AIDS-stricken lover. Some are not just unappealing–for instance, the rapist O’Neill successfully defends–but repellent.
The cast is first-rate–especially Dorian Harewood as the Pepto-Bismol-guzzling Mitchell, whose relationship with O’Neill has grown from hostile to grudging, and Georgann Johnson as O’Neill’s rich, conservative mother. Much of the show’s success is due to Gless’s credibility as a smart, somewhat angry woman who is redefining herself after being dumped by her husband for a younger woman. “Rosie is aware of her own vulnerability,” says Gless. “I wanted a woman who would survive and go on and be better off than she was, although she doesn’t know that yet. I think I’m telling a lot of women’s stories.” Each episode opens with a monologue in which O’Neill is talking to her psychiatrist. Gless helps write the scenes, which are often touching without being sentimental, and hopes one day to dare a full minute without saying anything. Allowing her that silence would be the greatest tribute of all.
