Mary Tyler Moore

There are still rumblings about a "Homicide: Life on the Street" TV movie, but nothing's definite yet. NBC and Tom Fontana, executive producer of the canceled, Baltimore-based show, are chatting about the idea. Fontana tells Daily Variety: "I wouldn't want it to be like `The Brady Bunch' reunion or anything like that. But we're talking."It looks like a "Mary Tyler Moore Show" update project is going make it after all. Moore has committed to star in and executive-produce a two-hour ABC TV movie based on characters from the original sitcom.

This is the story of a can-do, adorkable girl-in-the-city and her wacky entourage of colleagues who spoof the vagaries of a media conglomerate - and joust with their lovable anti-hero boss - to make comedy and some sense of the world. Could be the tagline of 30 Rock. Could also be a tagline for the '70s Mary Tyler Moore Show. And so, as 30 Rock winds down its seven seasons with the show's finale Thursday on NBC, I've been thinking about these comedy classics' quirky parallels.

Los Angeles"At first, I said it can't be done, because the memory of the show is too pure and respected," Mary Tyler Moore said yesterday. "But now I'm all for it."Mary's coming back. So is Lou. So is Archie, Edith and Meathead, too.CBS yesterday rolled out its February "sweeps" ratings strategy: reunions and retrospectives of shows that have earned a spot in our national memory.On Feb. 16, CBS will air the "All In The Family 20th Anniversary Special." On Feb. 17, Carol Burnett will host "The Very Best of The Ed Sullivan Show," and on Feb. 18, the network will offer "Mary Tyler Moore: The 20th Anniversary Show."

THAT GIRL: SEASON ONE / / Shout! Factory / / $39.98 Before Mary Richards, Murphy Brown or Carrie Bradshaw, there was Ann Marie. And 40 years after her debut on ABC, prime time's first independent woman is back in a delightful time warp of a five-DVD set that takes one straight back to the exuberance, promise and energy of being young in the go-go 1960s. Marlo Thomas stars as the wannabe actress who moves out of her parents' home in Brewster, N.Y., to take up single life in Manhattan -- a move that was revolutionary for a young female character on network TV at the time.

"Flirting With Disaster" does in fact flirt with disaster, in its very choice of forms. It's farce, one of those mad whirligigs that takes a single slightly illogical premise and punches it out toward infinity, based on the mad optimism that its creators can continue to crank and twist the plot in ever more absurd ways until it resembles a map of DNA as drawn by a chimp. But it can't just be fast and frantic. It's also got to be funny.Well, it's funny as hell and that's all there is to it.Written and directed by the frighteningly talented David O. Russell, who unleashed "Spanking the Monkey" on an unsuspecting world, this one watches as a moony, self-obsessed young man takes his wife on a cross-country odyssey in search of his real parents (he was given up for adoption)

In the spring of 1977, as The Mary Tyler Moore Show was about to end its extraordinary seven-year run on CBS, its leading lady was suffering mightily. "I could feel the separation anxiety welling up daily," Mary Tyler Moore wrote in her 1995 autobiography, After All. "I had spent more of my waking hours with the people on this show than I did my real family. ... The years that loomed ahead in my vision without the show seemed cold and gray and threatening. I would have to come to terms with what my abilities were.

LOS ANGELES -- One could turn the world on with her smile. The other could turn the most embarrassing moment into a punch line full of belly laughs. Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern were network television's prime-time response to changing attitudes of and toward women in the 1960s and '70s. While the term television icon is now applied to almost anyone who lasts more than six weeks in a prime-time series, Mary really is one: a media template for the single career woman defined by who she is rather than the man with whom she keeps company.

Los Angeles--The taps pour real beer. But the stuff in the glass on the bar in front of where Norm sits and drinks and drinks and drinks is the non-alcoholic kind.The yellow-and-red Wurlitzer jukebox plays real tunes: "The In Crowd" by Dobie Gray, "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis Presley, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" by the Platters and "I Fall to Pieces" by Patsy Cline. But the stairs behind it are fake and go nowhere. There is no Melville's fine seafood restaurant upstairs, as the sign promises.

Dark comedy is very hard to pull off.If you want to know how hard, watch "Thanksgiving Day" at 9 tonight on WMAR-TV (Channel 2).The film starts off by missing the right tone and never comes near finding it. The problems are many. One of the biggest is Chicago disc jockey Jonathon Brandmeier, for whom this film is meant in part to be a showcase. Mainly it showcases his deficiencies as a comic actor."Thanksgiving Day" is about a dysfunctional family that gathers in its suburban Detroit home for the traditional holiday dinner.

The Fox network previews a new kids' anthology show tonight, Mary Tyler Moore is on "Dateline NBC," and the offbeat comedy troupe known as The State, from MTV, breaks into network prime time with a Halloween special.* "Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) -- An hour-long special launches an anthology series to air regularly on Friday afternoons. Based on the children's book series by R. L. Stine, the first edition tells the story of a young girl who dons a mask to scare the boys who humiliated her. Fox.* "Dateline NBC" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11)

THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON / / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / $29.95 Sitcoms don't come any better than The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which set the gold standard for consistent, sophisticated and yet accessible comedy during its seven-season run on CBS beginning in 1970. When TV Guide chose television's 100 funniest moments, it included MTM's famous "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode, in which Moore's Mary Richards can't believe how crass everyone is being about the death of WJM-TV's beloved Chuckles the Clown, but then has to fight the urge to laugh during a eulogy celebrating his philosophy of life: "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants."

SEX AND THE CITY: THE COMPLETE SERIES -- HBO -- Home Video / $299.95 After the successful release of every season of this series, one might ask whether there is any real need for a $300 package combining all six seasons in one collection. The answer is yes. Sex and the City was such a beloved, liberating and delightful series that some fans can't let it go - and want a way to treasure it. This lushly packaged and nicely accessorized (with special features - much like Carrie's outfits) collection is just the ticket for those who think of Sex more as a guide to life than a TV show.

In the spring of 1977, as The Mary Tyler Moore Show was about to end its extraordinary seven-year run on CBS, its leading lady was suffering mightily. "I could feel the separation anxiety welling up daily," Mary Tyler Moore wrote in her 1995 autobiography, After All. "I had spent more of my waking hours with the people on this show than I did my real family. ... The years that loomed ahead in my vision without the show seemed cold and gray and threatening. I would have to come to terms with what my abilities were.

June may be the month of brides, but this is the month of television finales. Even as fans continue to debate the merits of last week's final episode of NBC's Friends, now comes the last episode of NBC's Frasier, one of television's most celebrated sitcoms. (Next week the prime-time runs of WB's Angel and ABC's The Practice also will end.) For Kelsey Grammer, executive producer and star of Frasier, which won 31 Emmys in 11 seasons, the goal of tonight's finale is "to leave everybody in a place where they are hopeful, where there is something to look forward to."

NBC's Friends was neither a great nor groundbreaking television series, but - almost in spite of itself - the 10-year-old sitcom about six handsome and self-absorbed, 20-something pals has had a significant impact on the kinds of messages sounded by prime-time television. The show - really a kinder, gentler version of Seinfeld, NBC's earlier comedy featuring a group of 30-somethings living on New York's Upper West Side - airs its final episode tonight at 9, awash in a sea of publicity and $2 million, 30-second advertisement spots.

In 1969, Jim Brooks and Allan Burns, two of Hollywood's most talented young television writers, had an idea for a new sitcom about a single woman working at a television station in Minneapolis. The writers met with CBS executives in New York to present the concept for what would become The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Central to the series was the fact that Moore would play the young, divorced Mary Richards -- the first divorced female character in television history. The executives loved the concept until they heard the word "divorced."

"Brave Dames and Wimpettes," by Susan Isaacs. Ballantine Books. 112 pages. $8.95.Women as doctors. Women as lawyers. TV and movies are doing a good job of depicting strong, accomplished women, right?Not really, according to Susan Isaacs. The best-selling author of "Compromising Positions" and "Almost Paradise" has written the very readable "Brave Dames and Wimpettes" for Ballantine's Library of Contemporary Thought. The book examines, as its subtitle states, "What Women Are Really Doing on Page and Screen."

LAST WEEKEND it was Lucy and Ricky. This weekend, it's Archie Bunker, Ed Sullivan and Mary Richards. No wonder they used to call CBS the Tiffany's of the networks.Unable to generate many destined-to-be-classic shows these days -- "Murphy Brown," maybe "Designing Women," but can you really see "Murder, She Wrote" getting enough votes for the Hall of Fame? -- CBS is dipping into its impressive past in search of viewers.Two are 20th anniversary specials, marking two decades since a pair of CBS' best comedies went on the air. Tomorrow night at 8 o'clock, it's 90 minutes of "All in the Family."

The Ellen Show is a nice, old-fashioned sitcom about a lesbian who returns to her home town and becomes a high school guidance counselor. If "nice" and "old-fashioned" seem like adjectives that couldn't possibly be used to describe any network series featuring a lesbian character in such a role, all I can do is ask you to watch when the series premieres tonight at 9:30 on CBS. Ellen DeGeneres plays a character named Ellen Richmond, but she might as...

William J. Baird Sr., 90, engineer, business owner William J. Baird Sr., an engineer and businessman who was active in Roman Catholic organizations, died Friday of pneumonia at Stella Maris in Timonium. The former resident of Mount Washington and Brooklandville was 90. While a college student in 1931, Mr. Baird began his career at Maryland Survey Bureau, a one-time Baltimore-based fire protection engineering firm. He went on to own the company in 1962 and operated it until his retirement in 1985.