Brady Bunch

1966: "Mission : Impossible"1967: "Soul Man" by Sam & Dave1967: "Camelot" premieres1969: "The Brady Bunch"

Two of Hollywood's beautiful people combine their star power on HBO tonight."One Fine Day" (8 p.m.-10 p.m.) has George Clooney parlaying his "ER" popularity into his first big-screen starring role, opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, in this 1996 romantic comedy. It's a contrived effort about two harried single parents (Clooney and Pfeiffer) brought together by their children.The movie may not be much, but boy, do the stars look good.At a glance"Mrs. Santa Claus" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13)

For once, it's the re-runs that are worth watching tonight. So travel back in time with Nickelodeon to 1972, when must-see TV was exactly that.Figure skating (9 p.m.-11 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Brian Boitano, Kurt Browning, Kristi Yamaguchi, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Torvill & Dean are among competitors in the World Professional Figure Skating Championships, taped last month at the USAir Arena in Landover. NBC."20/20" (10 p.m.-11 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Raves, the all-night, underground dance parties where drugs tend to flow as freely as the beat, are investigated by correspondent Lynn RTC Sherr.

Ever wonder what happened to Ann Marie, the woman Marlo Thomas played on "That Girl"? Tune in to "Friends" tonight and find out.* "Day & Date" (4 p.m.-5 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, always one of Hollywood's most fascinating couples, discuss their new film, the death-penalty drama "Dead Man Walking." CBS.* "Friends" (8 p.m.-8:30 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Consider this your invitation to one of the first lesbian weddings on prime-time TV, as Ross' ex-wife and the woman she left him for tie the knot.

It's a Night of Sixties' Sitcom Stars on Nickelodeon."The Rosie O'Donnell Show" (10 a.m.-11 a.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Rosie brings one of her role models, Philadelphia's own Mike Douglas, onto her new talk show. Has anybody seen this guy in the past 15 years?"Live From Lincoln Center" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., MPT, Channels 22 and 67) -- The 30th annual Mostly Mozart Festival is broadcast live from New York, with performers including violinists Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. PBS."American Gothic" (9 p.m.-10 p.m. and 10 p.m.-11 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13)

Please don't tell anybody, but I actually like "The Brady Bunch Movie." If this gets out, I'm ruined.Anyway, the film is astutely drawn from the brainless early 1970s TV series and built around a clever conceit: The actual TV Bradys, that born-to-be-mild, ever-chipper, ever-optimistic, ever-bland tribe of smiley mooners and bromide-spouting dweezers in the gaudy polyester threads from the pristine early '70s, have somehow been deposited in the center of...

Tonight's TV highlight: Humphrey Bogart and Isabella Rossellini, together again for the first time, on a high-tech, "Forrest Gump"-ish pairing on the series finale of "Tales From the Crypt."* "When Stars Were Kids" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., Channel 11) -- No celebrity grows up in a vacuum -- although, given the embarrassing and private mini-revelations offered here by discarded acquaintances, many will wish they had. Yet another low-budget, lower-IQ special from Dick Clark.* "Disney's Nancy Kerrigan Special: Dreams On Ice" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., Channel 13)

Two more season finales, a nostalgic "Brady Bunch" hour and a study of a 14-year-old violin virtuoso highlight a diverse evening.* "Houdini: Unlocking His Secrets" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- The great escape artist worked some of his magic in Baltimore, such as on an April day in 1916 when he escaped from a straitjacket while dangling from the old Sun building. Robert Urich is host of a special that presents modern magicians who re-create some of Harry Houdini's famous illusions.

Los Angeles -- There are certain comebacks that make sense and are even, in some cases, well-deserved: Tony Bennett's jazzy pop. Jim Thompson's hard-nosed pulp novels. Thigh-high stockings.And then there are those inexplicable returns from oblivion, the shifts in our cultural bedrock as difficult to predict or explain as the seismic tremors that routinely jolt Hollywood, the birthplace of much bizarro phenomena.Which brings us to "The Brady Bunch," the legendarily dumb sitcom that ran from 1969 to the mid-'70s, and cropped up sporadically as TV movies and mercifully short-lived sequel series.

Think you're a Brady aficionado? Test your knowledge. (Answers are at end of text.)1. How did Marcia's nose get broken, jeopardizing her big date with football hero Doug Simpson?A. Bobby threw a baseball at her.B. Peter threw a football at her.C. Greg threw a basketball at her.D. Alice threw a brownie at her.2. What was Alice's last name?A. KramdenB. ToklasC. NelsonD. Brady3. What was the name of the Bradys' dog?A. TigerB. LassieC. FalaD. Spot4. What street, named for a U.S. president, do the Bradys live on?

Twelve-year-old Katherine Lippincott wasn't even born when "The Brady Bunch" went off the air in 1974, but Sunday afternoon she was first in line to get Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormick's autograph at the Baltimore Book Festival. Lippincott of Baltimore County became a fan when watching DVDs of the sitcom while carpooling to school. The seventh-grader was less interested in McCormick's autobiography, "Here's the Story," that the actress was promoting and more eager to ask McCormick a question about one of the episodes.

Here's the story, of a woman named Maureen, who went from being America's perfect older sister to TV's weight-loss champion, then wrote a book about all the events in-between. "I had been asked for years to write a book," says Maureen McCormick, who parlayed a five-season stint on "The Brady Bunch" as apple-cheeked Marcia into pop-icon status, then spent big chunks of the next four decades dealing with the all-too-familiar fallout: few good follow-up roles, frustration over not being able to escape a character she played as a child, failed marriages, drugs, bleak future.

Do you know how Arnold Schwarzenegger felt the morning after he announced his candidacy for governor of California in 2003 and network talk show hosts questioned his qualifications on-air? He felt the same kind of deep hurt that he experienced as a little boy in Austria when his older brother punched him in the nose. Poor Arnold. Poor, poor, poor, poor, poor Arnold. See Arnold Run, a made-for-TV movie premiering tomorrow night on the A&E cable channel, is shot through with that kind of made-up, Hollywood, psycho-pseudo-neo-babble hokum - until the film adds up to one, big, fat, shining, smiley-face whitewash of the man. This is not just a silly made-for-TV movie; it's a dangerous one that trivializes politics, minimizes Schwarzenegger's acknowledged acts of sexual harassment and makes a villain out of the mainstream press for trying to bring factual information to voters before they went to the polls in California's infamous recall election.

Howard Realtors' legislative breakfast set for Wednesday The Howard County Association of Realtors has scheduled its annual legislative breakfast Wednesday in Columbia. Several county, state and federal lawmakers have been invited to attend the session. The event is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. at Linden Hall in the Dorsey Hall Village Center. The event is free to the public. Information: 410-740-4810. Ex-`Brady Bunch' star puts home up for sale LOS ANGELES - Barry Williams, who played Greg - the oldest brother on The Brady Bunch - and his wife, Eila, are moving to Manhattan and have put their Bel-Air home on the market at $4.25 million.

Stuart Little 2 holds firmly to the law of diminishing returns when it comes to movie sequels: Content to strive for nothing more than a replication of the earlier success, it manages to pretty much ignore all the strengths of the earlier film while exacerbating all its faults. We get to see all manner of close-ups of the adorable little Stuart, a mouse who's been adopted and is being raised as one of their own by the very human (and, of course, very humane) Little family. Which serves to remind us that mice - even computer-generated mice - do not have the most expressive faces.

The headlines are hard to miss and easy to smirk at. The Rocky Mountain News contributed "Patriots are Brady's bunch, for now." The Providence Journal-Bulletin offered "Brady Comes in for Bunch of Praise." The Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette told readers "Brady has got a bunch more responsibility." And the Boston Herald said simply "Pats Brady's bunch." So it was with some degree of trepidation that Kamon Simpson of The Gazette of Colorado Springs, Colo., began a story about New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady with the words of the famed TV sitcom: "Here's the story of a man named Brady."

About eight years ago, Barry Williams, aka Greg Brady, wrote a book about what it was like, being a kid actor on "The Brady Bunch," that early-1970s sitcom that somehow has become a cultural touchstone for anyone who grew up around that time. Light and airy as they come, the book's biggest revelation was that Barry was no different than every other male pre-teen alive at the time: he, too, had a crush on Maureen McCormick. But unlike the rest of us, he had the pleasure of working alongside her everyday, since she was playing his sister, Marcia.

1966: "Mission : Impossible"1967: "Soul Man" by Sam & Dave1967: "Camelot" premieres1969: "The Brady Bunch"

Two of Hollywood's beautiful people combine their star power on HBO tonight."One Fine Day" (8 p.m.-10 p.m.) has George Clooney parlaying his "ER" popularity into his first big-screen starring role, opposite Michelle Pfeiffer, in this 1996 romantic comedy. It's a contrived effort about two harried single parents (Clooney and Pfeiffer) brought together by their children.The movie may not be much, but boy, do the stars look good.At a glance"Mrs. Santa Claus" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13)

For once, it's the re-runs that are worth watching tonight. So travel back in time with Nickelodeon to 1972, when must-see TV was exactly that.Figure skating (9 p.m.-11 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) -- Brian Boitano, Kurt Browning, Kristi Yamaguchi, Ekaterina Gordeeva and Torvill & Dean are among competitors in the World Professional Figure Skating Championships, taped last month at the USAir Arena in Landover. NBC."20/20" (10 p.m.-11 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) -- Raves, the all-night, underground dance parties where drugs tend to flow as freely as the beat, are investigated by correspondent Lynn RTC Sherr.