Viewpoints

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Given the almost simultaneous rise of the women's liberation movement and TV cop shows, it required no genius to discern that an indifferent idea's time had to come soon. And so we have them this season--not one, but two weekly dramas about policewomen.

ABC's brain-trusters decided to make the female detective a black; if they had thought of it, they probably would have asked Teresa Graves, who plays the title role in Get Christie Love! (Wednesday, 10 p.m. E.D.T.), to improve the package by donning a war bonnet from time to time, thus touching base with another minority. We are spared this spectacle only because no one connected with this series seems to have been thinking about anything other than the main chance.

There had been an assumption that technical proficiency was the television viewer's sole remaining natural right, but even the photography on Christie has a cheap look. It does, however, complement the dialogue and the plots which sound as if they were made up as the actors went along, and the direction, whose only imperative seems to be to stretch 15 minutes worth of material out to a full hour's length.

Angie Dickinson, as Sergeant "Pepper" Anderson on NBC'S Police Woman (Friday, 10 p.m. E.D.T.), is at least permitted to be just not-so-plain Angie, and any program that allows this attractive, good-humored actress to be her familiar self cannot be all bad. The regular supporting cast, headed by Earl Holliman, is competent, and the action sequences are crisp. There is also some attempt to put the cops in contact with interesting criminals and characterized victims.

In neither show, however, can it be said that the leading woman has achieved truly equal status with her male partner. To be sure, the girls are allowed to engage in potentially dangerous undercover work that the boys simply cannot manage--posing as streetwalkers, for instance. They are even permitted to pull a trigger now and then, though only if they come close to fainting when someone gets hurt in the gunplay.

Feminine Intuition. Mostly, the men take an overprotective, implicitly patronizing attitude toward their female partners. While "feminine intuition" is allowed to contribute occasionally to the process of detection, most of the heavy brainwork is handled by the men.

The girls are simply not credited with, say, Columbo's powers of ratiocination or Kojak's ability to get off a cynical wisecrack.

As a result, it is doubtful that either of the characters played by Graves and Dickinson will ever develop much individuality (even if they manage to stay on the air the whole season), although it is logical to assume that the women who are pioneering in police work at the detective level these days are likely to be rather more idiosyncratic than the average meter maid. Certainly they are more interesting than Graves' jive-talking, hip-swinging, street-smart chick--a currently modish figure in blaxploitation movies. Dickinson, to be sure, is a little less stereotyped, but her show's creators are undecided as to whether she should be den mother or kid sister to the squad room, and they really ought to come up with a characterization more novel than either of those. In any event, neither Christie nor Pepper has much more dimension than Perry Mason's old sidekick, Delia Street. They've got a long way to go, baby. " . Richard Schickel

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