| Plague of locusts morphs into bat attack
If ever there was a TV movie that needed no sequel, it was CBS's "Locusts," which aired in April to terrible reviews but good ratings, especially among young viewers (27 percent above the "CBS Sunday Movie's" season average).
CBS has been faltering on Sunday nights opposite ABC's strong, "Desperate Housewives"-fueled lineup, so the network called back the cast from "Locusts" to make a sequel. Since you can't really have locusts attacking America twice in a row, this time they've opted for a bat attack.
It should go without saying that "Vampire Bats" (9 p.m., ET, Sunday) is just as awful as "Locusts" was.
Lucy Lawless returns as voracious insect expert-turned-college professor Maddy Rierdon who's moved with husband Dan (Dylan Neal) to Louisiana.
They're juggling their careers with family life -- Brett Butler ("Grace Under Fire") returns from exile as Neal's sister -- and trying to put their locust ordeal behind them.
"After the whole locust thing, I thought we were through with the whole life or death thing," Dan moans when students start turning up dead on the college campus.
That setting allows for many shots of buff frat boys partying and lithesome barely-dressed sorority girls, including one who sleeps atop her bedsheets in nothing but lacy undergarments. Not that CBS is pandering to young, horny viewers.
Local law enforcement wants to blame the drug ecstasy for turning students into murderers, but Maddy knows better. Naturally, no one will listen to her until there's a massive attack on a faculty party on a riverboat and on an underground student party. Then she and her students start to plan a bat attack.
"Oh, come on, if people our age can go to war, we can certainly help you capture some stupid vampire bats," whines one co-ed when Maddy objects to the students' participation in her scheme.
In early scenes, the bats aren't shown; the camera just rushes toward its victim (including "Late Late Show" host Craig Ferguson) as the sound of wings flapping plays on the soundtrack. When the bats are shown sucking blood from victims, quick cuts can't disguise the reality: The vampire bats look like personality-free Muppets. Given the simplistic script by Doug Prochito, that's an apt description for the human characters, too.
'Random 1' The feel-good, let's-help-others reality trend continues with A&E's "Random 1" (8 p.m. Tuesday), in which two buddies travel the country in a pick-up truck (named Jackie) doing good deeds for strangers. It's uplifting, but not hugely entertaining. After a while, I sort of think the show will feel tired; once you've seen one good deed done, you've seen them all.
In 1996 friends Andre Miller and John Chester started a journey to meet strangers at random and do good deeds.
"When you help someone, especially someone you don't know, you feel better about yourself," says Chester, the show's narrator. "And when you feel better about yourself, you feel better about the world."
They don't give out money, but they try to make connections, whether it's getting a cell phone company to donate phones and calling plans to a man who needs it or giving a recovering drug addict a ride.
"Random 1" features two random acts of kindness per one-hour episode, and in between, Miller and Chester banter and bicker like an old married couple.
Tuesday's premiere includes an unnecessary prologue that tries to justify the show's sometimes simple good deeds in light of Hurricane Katrina, explaining there are no Katrina-related assistance in the episode, but it is "about holding to the spirit of helping your fellow man any way you can."
In the not-so-politically-correctly titled "The Tree Hugger and One-Legged Bum" they help a homeless man get a new prosthetic leg and help a woman who wants to work for a non-profit get a job interview.
"Random 1" is less contrived than "Three Wishes," so if you randomly stumble across this series and need a pick-me-up by seeing people do good deeds, it won't be a total waste of time.
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