ALL TIMES ARE EDT. UNLESS NOTED CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS. - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY IN BLUE GLOW "Boogie Nights" on the boob tube? (10/15/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - ENTERTAINMENT THIS WEEK MOVIES Boogie Nights The Ice Storm Playing God Devil's Advocate INTERVIEWS Ang Lee "The Ice Storm" director on fathers, innocence and the '70s Mark Waters "The House of Yes" director on his perfect Sundance experience TELEVISION "Ally McBeal" coming Monday - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK Gang Related Seven Years in Tibet Washington Square

blue glow SALON'S TV PICKS FOR WEEKEND, OCT. 17-19, 1997 BY JOYCE MILLMAN S E R I E S Mia Farrow is profiled on a new Biography (8 p.m. EDT/9 PDT, Fri., A&E). The new crime drama Players (8 p.m. Fri., NBC) stars Ice-T, Costas Mandylor and Frank John Hughes as parolees who work undercover for the FBI. The show was created by Dick Wolf, who also created "Law & Order," but don't expect that Emmy-winning series' gravity or snap. "Players" is Crime Lite, all car chases and cocky wisecracks. It's like "Nash Bridges" for 12-year-old boys. Homicide: Life on the Street (10 p.m. Fri., NBC) finally starts its new season. There are some big changes. Melissa Leo, who seldom had enough to do as Sgt. Kay Howard, has left the show. So has Max Perlich, who played Brodie the crime scene videographer. Callie Thorne joins the cast as a headstrong detective from Seattle who is paired with Pembleton. Signing on as regulars are Jon Seda, who played Falsone, the hot-shot car theft investigator, in a couple of episodes last season, and Peter Gerety as Gharty, the weaselly internal affairs cop who wants another chance to prove himself. Brendan Fraser hosts Saturday Night Live (11:30 p.m. Sat., NBC) with music from Björk. Hank's beloved lawn is torn up as part of an archaeological dig on King of the Hill (8:30 p.m. Sun., Fox). S P O R T S World Series: Indians at Marlins (Game 1, 7:30 p.m. Sat., NBC; Game 2, 7 p.m. Sun., NBC). Football: 49ers at Falcons or regional action (1 p.m. Sun., Fox); Jaguars at Cowboys or regional action (1 p.m., Sun., NBC); Dolphins at Ravens or regional action (4 p.m. Sun., NBC). T A L K Friday's lineup: Rosie O'Donnell (syndicated) hosts Carly Simon and Denis Leary; David Letterman (CBS) features filmmaker Harmony Korine and the band Smash Mouth; Ethan Hawke and Kim Delaney guest on Jay Leno (NBC); Charlie Rose (PBS) has a scheduled panel on the 10th anniversary of the stock market crash; Tom Snyder (CBS) talks with Della Reese; Joan Collins is a panelist on Politically Incorrect (ABC); Conan O'Brien (NBC) features Robert Pastorelli and Charlize Theron. S P E C I A L S Paul Sorvino has the title role in the new cable movie Joe Torre: Curveballs Along the Way (9 p.m. Fri., Showtime), about the New York Yankees manager whose team plays in the World Series as his brother (Robert Loggia) undergoes a heart transplant. Goldie Hawn makes her directing debut with the cable movie Hope (8 p.m. Sun., TNT), about a small-town Southern girl (Jenna Malone) coming of age amid racial tensions and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Christine Lahti, J.T. Walsh and Jeffrey Sams also star. Baseball counter-programming: Jane Austen's 'Emma' (6 p.m. EDT/7 PDT Sun., A&E), a 1996 British TV/A&E production, stars Kate Beckinsale as the lovable busybody, while "Masterpiece Theatre" reruns the 1995 theatrical feature Persuasion (check local times Sun., PBS), starring Amanda Root as the Jane Austen spinster who gets a second chance when her rejected suitor (Ciaran Hinds) reappears. Finally, there's the new British TV/A&E production Charlotte Brontë's 'Jane Eyre' (8 p.m. EDT/9 PDT Sun., A&E), starring Samantha Morton (who played Harriet Smith in the aforementioned A&E version of "Emma") and Ciaran Hinds (who's on opposite himself tonight in "Persuasion"). The pale, birdlike Morton is a wonderful Jane Eyre, both serene and emotionally storm-tossed. And while Hinds is way too handsome to make a physically ideal Rochester (the book tells us over and over how ugly he is), he nails the surly, dominating sexual aura that so captivates Miss Eyre. The production itself, though, feels rushed and truncated. Jane's horrifying girlhood is dispensed with in a few opening scenes. And if you're looking for a faithful depiction of the brilliant later chapters, where she wanders homeless and starving on the moors only to be reborn when she's taken in by three siblings who represent the family she always longed for -- well, you're going to be disappointed. More frustrating though is the way scriptwriter Kay Mellor, in an attempt to make the story more concise, often reduces Jane's singularly independent voice to a paperback romance novel heroine's gush. Brontë has Jane describing her rival for Rochester's affections this way: "If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers -- jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her." And this is the TV version: "She had everything. She could attract any man she liked. But she liked Mr. Rochester." This production of "Jane Eyre" is all generic Gothic romance; it gives you little sense of the proto-feminist passion and the spiritual hunger that makes the romance so sensual and so triumphant. It's like a cover without a book. SALON | Oct. 17, 1997

Blue Glow for < href="/ent/glow/1997/10/16glow.html">Thursday, Oct. 16

ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC WHITE

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