A Listing Ship of Sweeps

By Frank Rich

The French Atlantic Affair, Nov. 15,16,18, ABC, 9p.m. E.S.T.

So far the 1979-80 network TV season has been marked by a surprisingly close ratings race, the absence of a new hit series and the inability of Charlie's latest Angel to recite dialogue. In November, the doldrums come to an end. This is sweeps month, when the networks play the Nielsen game for keeps. Suddenly the air waves are flooded with heavy-ticket movies: Dog Day Afternoon, The Omen, Oh, God! Hit shows, from Dallas to Little House on the Prairie, offer expanded episodes; flops go into temporary or permanent hibernation. The competitive fallout can be severe. On the sweeps' first Sunday night, Nov. 4, NBC's MacArthur (Part 2) was beaten almost 4 to 1 by ABC'S Jaws. In TV terms, MacArthur did not just fade away--it died.

For ABC, this November's ratings war is crucial. Many of the No. 1 network's hits have suffered erosion this season, and the time has come to recoup. To this end, ABC is betting on an ambitiously sleazy collection of made-for-TV movies. Leading the pack is a six-hour miniseries, The French Atlantic Affair, which will have to face such competition as A Bridge Too Far (NBC) and Silver Streak (CBS). ABC just may win. Its mini-series aims so low that it does not even qualify as popcorn entertainment; the show is best watched while chewing sugarless gum.

Ostensibly a thriller, The French Atlantic Affair poses a hypothetical question that only a TV producer could concoct:

What would happen if Jim Jones hijacked the Love Boat? The villain of the show is Father Dunleavy, whose fanatical cult takes over the transatlantic luxury liner Festivale and holds its passengers hostage for $70 million in ransom. Like Jones, Dunleavy is said to be charismatic, sexy and demonic, but ABC is too smart to cast the role with an actor who might offend a Nielsen family. Instead, Dunleavy is played by Telly Savalas, whose bland manner and leisure suits make him seem more like a Las Vegas maitre d' than a satanic killer.

The supporting players are no less tacky. The pouty Michelle Phillips, as the ship's social director, wears so many silly getups that one might think ABC is trying to trick viewers into thinking that she is Cher. The blow-dried Chad Everett (Medical Center) is cast as a Pulitzer-prizewinning author who wears what appears to be a Pulitzer Prize medal on a gold chain around his neck. There are real French actors in the cast -- Marie-France Pisier, Louis Jourdan -- as well as ersatz French men like James Coco. Brooklynese is provided by Shelley Winters, who seems to have a habit of booking passage on doomed ships.

What holds one's interest in The French Atlantic Affair is the exuberant fraudulence of its every frame. Locations as far apart as Paris and Taos appear to be in the same time zone. The Festivale, though described as "very chic, very in, very high style," looks like a floating Ramada Inn. The script is a graveyard of unintentional boners. In one particularly cross moment, Savalas snarls, "Am I a fool? Do you think I talk just to hear my head rattle?" In this sweeps extravaganza, such questions are invariably --and giddily-- rhetorical.

Frank Rich

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