COULD THIS BE FOX'S BEST DRAMA? 'CLASS OF '96' IS MORE THAN '90210 KIDS GO TO COLLEGE'

At first, it sounds like "Beverly Hills, 90210 Goes to College," but it isn't. It's better. It could be Fox's best series so far, not counting Matt Groening's animated "Simpsons."

"Class of '96," which premiered last week, is an hour-long drama series paired with the more offbeat "Key West" on Tuesday nights. Together, they gave Fox its sixth night of original programming. And on its own, "'96" gives Fox a critical success.

Set at fictional Havenhurst College, an Ivy League school in the Northeast, the series focuses on seven freshmen of diverse backgrounds who live in the same dorm and become friends, to a greater or lesser extent, the day they arrive.

"Class of '96" is from Mandy Films Inc., in association with ABC Productions, the first time a network production company has agreed to do a series for a competitor.

Advertisement

The arrangement pairs executive producer Leonard Goldberg, who made some of ABC's most popular series and headed up Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., and his friend Brandon Stoddard, former head of ABC Entertainment and now chief of its production wing.

Goldberg said he knows that the series may be classified as another "youth ensemble" show. But he believes that writer John Romano, who won an Emmy nomination for "Hill Street Blues," and Peter Horton, who directed and acted in the pilot and will direct other episodes, make this one superior.

"Because of the talent of these two men, I think the show has a quality and tone that separates it from other shows," he said. "Peter did a fabulous job on the pilot."

The seven students interact with other students and visitors to Havenhurst's campus, as well as faculty members whose roles are recurring. One is Horton, who plays a professor based largely on Romano experiences as a teacher of English and literature at Columbia University. In ABC's "thirtysomething," Horton played college instructor Gary Shepherd.

Advertisement

"It's not about someone getting an abortion and someone getting AIDS and someone sleeping with so-and-so's roommate," said Horton. He called it the "minutia of college experience."

Goldberg said Romano, who knows academic bureaucracy from the inside, told him that "the good thing about having your own university is that we make the rules, we admit the students, we hire the faculty and we schedule the classes."

The series' writers and producers also decide the school's socio-political leanings. Goldberg said an episode on "political correctness is going to take some flak."

If "Class" rings true to college freshmen, there may be another reason: Goldberg's daughter Amanda is a real-life member of the Class of '96 at the University of Pennsylvania. "I have a vested interest in this series," said her father, who named the production company for this series Mandy Films.

Advertisement

The pilot's credits list Amanda Goldberg as assistant to the costume designer. After that episode, made in the summer, she left for Philadelphia to study English and art history -- among other courses -- at Penn and and take extra classes at nearby Moore School of Design.

But her imprint goes beyond a bit of design work. In last week's opener, Jessica Cohen (Lisa Dean Ryan) arrives at school in a chauffeur-driven car, riding with Daddy in the back seat. When she asks the driver to let her off before they get to her dorm, Dad picks up on her embarrassment: He knows she's as sensitive about being a rich man's child as he was about being poor.

"It's a wonderful little scene," said Goldberg. "That's been going on with me and my daughter since her first day of kindergarten. When we were almost there, she said, 'You have to stop here.' Basically, they {children of privilege} like to be anonymous."

Advertisement

About the car: "{Director} Peter Horton didn't want a limo," Goldberg said, "but he wanted a certain car, a certain color for the exterior and the interior, and they couldn't find the color Peter wanted."

Then, said Goldberg, Horton spotted Goldberg's Lincoln Town Car. Perfect, Horton declared, except that it needed tinted windows. Done, said Goldberg.

In the opener, Jessica's father suggests that the chauffeur at least carry her matched set of luggage into Stillman Hall. But when she arrives in her dorm, she's carrying her own belongings in boxes, having disposed of the pricey suitcases.

Jessica's roommates are drama student Patty Horvath (Megan Ward) and party-girl Robin Farr (Lori Wuhrer). Elsewhere in Stillman are the guys, who share double rooms. Rich preppy Whitney Reed (Brandon Douglas), assigned to his father's old room, finds that his roommate is basketball player Antonio Hopkins (Perry Moore), whose father collects tolls on a New York City bridge. Entrepreneur/computer whiz Samuel "Stroke" Dexter (Gale Hansen) has been paired with David Morrissey, first in his blue-collar family to go to college.

Advertisement

If Morrissey gets some of the series' most thoughtful lines, it may be because writer Romano, like the character, grew up a blue-collar Catholic from New Jersey.

Like her character, Patty Horvath -- who introduces herself by adding, "Yes, my mother's actress Anna Horvath" -- Megan Ward is the daughter of people in the business. Ward's parents founded and direct an acting school in Honolulu.

"She {Patty Horvath} comes from Greenwich Village, I came from a very small acting circle," she said. "But even though she grew up in a big city, it's a very, very closed circle."

Ward, the youngest of four siblings, said, "I grew up doing plays, knowing exactly what I wanted to do in life. I took all my savings and went to Los Angeles at 17 and enrolled in an acting school, the Loft Studio. I took three classes a day, four days a week. I didn't go to college, but doing this show is so much like going to college. We have to cram for final exams, like the students. And I'm saving money, in case I decide to go. My best friends all just recently graduated."

Advertisement

Ward, who said she'd watched many an installment of "Beverly Hills, 90210," thinks this series will be better.

"People say, 'Isn't this just "90210" goes to college?' But as soon as they see it, they know better. This is my first television series, and every time I'm feeling insecure about something, Brandon Douglas says, 'Megan, you don't understand how good this is.'"

If it's up to the actors, she said, the series will keep up the quality.

"They've selected seven perfectionists who care so much about the product that we don't let them get crazy," she said. "We're on the phone fighting to keep the consistency and fighting to change a line. We work really hard."

The actors, who have made 12 episodes, will go back to Toronto next week to film at least five others. Douglas thinks Fox may order more.

Advertisement

"I think it's really good," he said. "I think for television it's outstanding -- not to put down other youth shows on TV, because there are others that are good."

This week, Antonio Hopkins is counseled by an athletic adviser to take easy courses that will allow him more time for basketball. Initially, he is offended over the implication that he may not be able to keep up with the other students, most of them white and affluent. But when he finds that everyone else in his literature class has read "The Great Gatsby" in high school, he suddenly realizes that his academic background may not have prepared him for an Ivy League school.

That's in contrast to roommate Whitney Reed, who has a top-drawer education and a strained family life.

Douglas sees "a lot of storylines" stemming from the relationship between roommates Reed and Hopkins. "What you find out is that, in my opinion, Whitney comes from an uppercrust dysfunctional family where all emphasis is placed on success and you sort of don't communicate feeling," said Douglas. "The relationship with his brother is based on jealousy. From his youth, his older brother is the star of this and the star of that. I don't think he even knows his brother, because he was in prep school and only saw him on holidays."

Advertisement

"Class of '96" is shot in the classic stone buildings of the University of Toronto, which may see a sudden increase in applications because of this series.

"We went all over the country, trying to find a place that would give us a talent pool and that had something that was a studio or could be converted into a studio where we'd build our sets," explained Goldberg. "Our second choice was Duke.

"Originally we did a 20-minute sampler for Fox. We shot it at UCLA and a women's prep school in Santa Monica. Then we got the order to go on the air, and Peter Horton had to edit that into the early footage shot in Toronto."

Goldberg and the other Southern Californians were enthusiastic over Toronto's change of seasons. "We started in late summer, and we went through the fall with the trees blooming, then the winter," he said. "And in Episodes 11 and 12, it snows -- Toronto got the biggest snowfall it had got in 20 years."

Goldberg was executive producer of "Something About Amelia," the 1984 Emmy-winner as outstanding dramatic movie. Earlier, he and partner Aaron Spelling executive-produced some of ABC's most popular series: "The Mod Squad" (1968-73), "The Rookies" (1972-76), "S.W.A.T." (1975-76), "Starsky and Hutch" (1975-79), "Charlie's Angels" (1976-81), "Fantasy Island" (1978-84) and "Hart to Hart" (1979-84). Mike Nichols joined them to make "Family" (1976-80).

Spelling is now executive producer of "Beverly Hills, 90210," featuring his daughter Tori as one of the players.

Apart from his personal interest in "Class of '96," Goldberg, who has also produced theatrical films, thinks the Big Three networks should take a hard look at what they're putting on the air.

"The three networks, essentially, haven't changed very much in 30 years," he said. "They need in my humble opinion, to redefine themselves, because certainly the world and the world of entertainment and television has changed and they basically haven't.

"I think that's one reason their audience has fallen from a 90 share to a 60 share. Yes, there are other reasons for it. You can always blame someone else: That's traditional with American business. The automobile industry went through it, IBM is going through it.

"But I think they should think about who they are. Except for Fox or CNN or a cable service like Lifetime Television, the networks are still doing it exactly as they originally did it.

"Originally the nets were owned by three strong individuals: Paley, Sarnoff and Goldenson. They loved what they did -- they built these places. Now they're owned by conglomerates.

"I guess they needed shaping up on that side, the business side, but all that really matters is what's on that screen in people's livingrooms. The problem is in the programming. That's what the emphasis has to be on. What's on the screen is what's important. The networks are not making widgets, they're not making pipes, they are different. What they make has to be done by creative people who cannot be shoehorned. And that's what the conglomerates cannot understand."

As for "Class of '96," Goldberg is awaiting the finish of an episode about parents' weekend. "I'm interested to see what the parents will be like."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZK6zr8eirZ5nnJ6zpr%2FTsqOeZ6SrfHKFmGxmaWlfZ4Fwr86uo51lpJ22tHnBnmSfp6ioeqOx0q1knaqRoq5ur8uaqqxln5t6eoKMoqpmpZ%2Bnsm7Ax5qlZnFgZ35xecqim6xll6R6tbuMnKalpJWcsnB9l3JqnmiWZ3p3fsFqZG1uZZl6o6%2BTm2RrmpSbf6Oxkm%2BZappf