New Life

In the dolor of television's long dull summer, almost any new face would have been welcome. But with last week's show. NBC's The Lively Ones had outlived the first blush of its July arrival in such splendid shape that it was clearly more than a child of summertime's special forbearance. With a polished, inventive approach to the musical variety-show format, The Lively Ones is indeed lively and, more than lively, likable.

By cutting away all the waste-time of introductions (" . . . and now, folks, a really wonderful performer and a great human being . . ."), apologies, thank yous and goodbyes. Producer-Director Barry Shear, 39, makes room for as many as seven acts, each appreciatively longer than usual. Host Vic Damone, who sings one song a week, provides sketchy continuity by turning up here and there in the company of two whoopsy and ridiculous girls, who squirm in their chairs, giggle and twist while the musicians play.

Each of the sets is shot in a different, often bizarre locale--supposedly the terrain covered by "the lively set," whom the show's publicists define as Forddriving youngsters who have outgrown rock 'n' roll. Last week's show had Trumpeter Shorty Rogers at a Nike-Zeus site, Pianist Peter Nero playing beneath a radar scanner, the New Christy Minstrels on the Pacific beach near Los Angeles; also another show starred Ella Fitzgerald. Stan Kenton realized what must have been a lifelong ambition by directing a field of playerless instruments dangling from wires, while the real orchestra sat off in the wings and played a pretentious Kenton work called Existentia in Brass that sounded like Malaguena.

Future shows (Thursdays at 9:30 p.m., E.D.T.) will have Peggy Lee, Andre Previn, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Greco and Chris Connor, among others. As of now, the show will expire September 13th, when, with feather duster and senseless sighs. Hazel returns to take its place. But the show has already attracted such favorable attention that Producer Shear is getting executive-suite feelers for a possible winter series.

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