Wise entertainment investing

TV's The $treet and Bull are leveraging audiences with Dow Jones action, but despite business incongruities in both, one emerges as a drama likely to gain the most points.

By ERIC DEGGANS

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 29, 2000

One is the best TV drama you're probably not watching. The other is a promising but seriously flawed melodrama barely worth your attention.

Surprisingly, the difference between Fox's The $treet at 9 p.m. Wednesday on WTVT-Ch. 13 and TNT's Bull at 10 p.m. Tuesdays isn't that one captures Wall Street's pulse better than the other -- though that helps.

It's that Bull gives you characters to care about and The $treet doesn't. Period.

This week, The $treet will probably get the most attention, making its debut with Fox's new Tuesday night shows as the latest effort from Beverly Hills 90210 and Sex and the City mastermind Darren Star.

Powered by Star's penchant for combining sex and glamorous young people, this show is about the stock market the way Baywatch is about surfing -- opening with a shot of handsome hero Jack Kenderson (That Thing You Do!'s Tom Everett Scott) in bed with a fiancee you know within minutes is bad for him.

A hotshot broker at the Wall Street firm Balmont Stevens, Kenderson is an impossibly upright yuppie icon -- he invites the geeky intern to his bachelor party, turns down advances from two beautiful blonds and masterminds a $100-million Internet IPO. (Talk about dated; when is the last time an online IPO actually made money?)

The only question is how he will wind up with the beautiful yet distant vice president of sales Catherine Miller (Jennifer Connelly) -- a competent career woman given to longing looks when Kenderson isn't watching. Thank goodness, Wednesday's episode doesn't provide the answer.

The most interesting character here is also the least likable -- Freddie Sacker (Rick Hoffman), a perversely charming, yet cartoonishly misogynist broker given to calling women "feminazis" and trading stock information for the services of strippers.

In this environment, business is just a distraction -- a land of stuffy boardrooms to flee for daytime trysts and late-night parties.

It's also a haven for what I call the Ally McBeal syndrome: Women characters talk tough and look sharp, but become shallow reflections of male fantasies. (No wonder promotional ads for this show featured a barely clothed woman's torso).

At least TNT's Bull, which begins rerunning its first 11 episodes Tuesday, avoids the weight of soap opera-style relationships and boorish meditations on gender politics. Instead, TNT's first original series focuses on a group of young stockbrokers who leave a ruthless, racist institution to build their own company, HSD.

It's a surprisingly deft drama that seeks to do for stockbrokers what West Wing has done for politicians -- humanizing our young heroes (including ex-New York Undercover lead Malik Yoba) as folks who believe there are limits to what you should do to make a buck.

Stifle the urge to laugh. After all, this is television.

Yes, anyone who knows anything about business will find both The $treet and Bull wildly improbable. But most viewers want only a semblance of reality and compelling characters they can get lost in; on that score, Bull pays much better dividends.

The biggest question remains: Why did it take a decade's worth of bull market for TV to come up with a couple of Wall Street-based dramas?

Left a little deflated by George W. Bush's grinning elation over Texas' application of the death penalty? Then you'll want to see Death Penalty: Who Lives, Who Dies at 10 p.m. Monday and Tuesday on Court TV, two one-hour shows culled from Nightline's recent series Crime and Punishment: A Matter of Life and Death.

Monday's installment examines a mentally retarded man facing the death penalty in Virginia. Tuesday looks at allegations of incompetence and unfairness in Texas' court process, compared with a well-funded public defender's office in Colorado that prosecutors say has an unfair advantage. It all adds up to salient election year viewing.

With days to go before the elections, A Time to Choose -- A PBS/NPR Voter's Guide at 8 p.m. Wednesday on WEDU-Ch. 3 nevertheless promises a new look at the same old topics. Simulcast live on PBS and National Public Radio, this three-hour event explores the big issues influencing voters this season, using footage from the investigative show Frontline.

There's an Internet component, with viewers and listeners able to respond to the show at http://www.pbs.org/timetochoose. The on-air talent includes Jim Lehrer, NPR host Juan Williams and Washington Week in Review's Gwen Ifill, among others.

To reach Eric Deggans call (727) 893-8521, e-mail deggans@sptimes.com.

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