LOS ANGELES – There’s a Homefront homecoming tonight, and anyone with a yen for a yarn who missed it the first time around is well-advised to get hooked now.
Primetime serials traditionally repeat poorly, but this slick and satisfying ’40s-era drama – call it “How the Baby-Boom Generation Was Born” – gained its audience slowly over its freshman season. Those who resisted catching up in the middle have a perfect opportunity now to get with the program from the start.
Tonight’s 90-minute pilot, nominated for an Emmy as best TV movie, is a lush period piece of post World War II homecoming fervor. As the grunts head back to River Run, Ohio, a Peyton Place awaits of dashed or doomed love affairs and inevitable social change.
In a show like this, the suds are choice, but future episodes get even better, dealing with broad issues like the violent burgeoning of the labor movement and racial prejudice. The scripts – mostly by husband-wife creators Bernard Lechowick and Lynn Marie Latham – are marvels of clever construction and crafty plotting.
Next Tuesday, Homefront airs the previously unseen second episode, focusing on the funeral of a boy who didn’t make it back home. At the time, ABC deemed it too heavy to air so early in the show’s run, but the decision was a mistake.
The hour is a doozy of emotional intensity that also manages to weave in an unusual caper subplot, capped by Hattie Winston’s stirring a capella rendition of the spiritual “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”
By that time, anyone with the slightest bent for good old-fashioned manipulation will be sold – and ABC hopes they’ll follow Homefront to its new home, the extremely tough time period of Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, as of July 30.
At a press breakfast last week, producers and cast put the best face forward about the move. Latham and Lechowick gamely recited research statistics that show Homefront’s percentage of female viewers ages 18-49 is the highest of any prime-time series. “We’re advertiser friendly,” not unlike ABC’s other low-profile and high-quality survivor Life Goes On, Latham said.
The competition is stiff, between NBC’s old favorite Cheers, CBS News’ Street Stories magazine and Fox’s equally female- oriented Beverly Hills, 90210. Lechowick said his l0-year-old son’s face “absolutely dropped when he found we were going up against 90210. It’s a show we consider acceptable for him, and Lynn watches it with him.”
ABC Entertainment President Robert Iger has called the scheduling “aggressive,” given the show’s surprisingly youthful following and NBC’s post-Cosby Show vulnerability on Thursdays come fall. It’s “not a move that necessarily puts Homefront in jeopardy,” Iger said.
Its long-term future, though, could hinge on the boost of a summer resurgence, bolstering the following for a show that richly deserves its (however tenuous) second chance.