Nude Twists for Tired TV

Hapless previewers of this fall's television schedule have already added their amens to John Crosby's classic allegation that the American medium is little more than "chewing gum for the eyes." Overseas, mercifully, mankind's video-viewing prospects are far less fatuous. The current craze on Tokyo TV is a corps of kimonoless chorines who prance weekly on a bluish bauble called The Pink Mood Show; and in France, the unstrung heroines of the Folies-Bergère debuted déshabillé for Parisian TViewers late last year. Inspired by this broad-minded programing concept from abroad, lampooning lensman Jerry Yulsman illustrates how the female form – suffering not a whit from overexposure – could be used to boost both Nielsens and morale on our drear domestic screens.

If the ofttime dry domain of cultural programing – long relegated to the ghetto of Sunday afternoon – were made more bare and less barren, cerebral fare would win prime-time privileges by Monday morning. On "Omnibust," for instance, a downbeat discourse on dodeca-phonics would acquire an upbeat flavor with the presence of a nimble female performer, sans dinner jacket, as the fourth member of a string quartet. TV's operatic efforts would reap raves and ratings if an unclad coloratura appeared as an eyefilling Aïda, a well-spiced Salome, or a breastplateless Brünnhilde. Daybreak dissertations such as "Sunup Semester" would open orbs and earn A's en masse if their curriculums were stripped of stuffy academic trappings. An erudite explication of molecular energy would penetrate the most impervious pate if those busy little electrons, protons and neutrons were represented by the anatomic structures of energetic blondes, brunettes and redheads. Art lectures could feature live "life" classes for armchair esthetes. And in video physics courses, Archimedes' law of water displacement could be delectably demonstrated by a bathing beauty in a brimming bathtub. Until recently, the pasts of meek and mighty alike were whitewashed weekly in sudsy bathos on "This Is Your Life." The monotony of these pallid bios would have been mitigated if a surprised subject had been reunited – not with a clutch of lavender-scented kindergarten teachers, fudge-making maiden aunts from Perth Amboy and kindly patriarchs whose lawns he cut as a kid, but, as pictured here – with a gaggle of girlfriends from his oat-sowing years, accoutered exactly as enshrined in his memory. Less nifty knickknacks are conferred on the contestants of TV's game and give-away shows. But the interest of bachelor bidders on "The Prize Is Right," for instance, would be immeasurably enhanced if the weekly showcase were a matched bedroom set highlighted by a togless maiden atop the inner-spring mattress.

The often inverse ratio between entertainment and edification in TV news and public affairs could be made disarmingly direct by adding a dash of nudes to the news. Current events would gain a refreshing sense of intimate involvement if Winkley and Dinkley were to begin featuring film clips not only of the latest intrigue in the Caribbean but of the latest Ekberg strip at a Roman revel; or depth features not only on burgeoning African nationalism but also on unfeathered fertility rites; or taped trips not merely to political conventions but to nature-camp buffday parties. Time-traveling TV documentaries have long allowed the history-smitten to range about in the past; on such shows as "You Are Bare," however, the moment has come to drop a few stitches in time by alternating dramatic re-enactments of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and Lincoln's death at the Ford Theater with video visits to a full-undress convocation of the Hellfire Club, to a Babylonian temple for a videogle at its Baal-digging belles, to the crimson quarters of the Marquisde Sade, or – through Jerry Yulsman's all-seeing lens – to a Pom-peian villa for an eyeful of Roman epidermis and Imperial decline. Faithful vidiots will recall with rue the ersatz informality, leaden levity and stilled small talk of "Person to Person," a recently demised palaver show which bearded well-behaved bigwigs in their dens, amidst a Mato Grosso of cables, kliegs, cue cards and reduced visibility from the chain-smoking moderator. The option would never have been dropped, we aver, had the producer dared to skulk unannounced into the pink-and-white palazzo of the Mickey Hargitays for an unrehearsed tubside tête-à-tête with the lady bountiful of the house; followed by equally spontaneous social calls on other limelit beauties, not bib-and-tuckered in the parlor, but – through the magic of television – birthday-suited in the boudoir. The nude horizons beckoning to other talk shows are equally unlimited: on David Slushkind's blabathon, for example, lithe luminaries could bare bosoms instead of souls; "At Transom," a wee-hour Chicago chinfest, could serve up garbless gab with its cold coffee; and Mike Wallace, the trend-setting prober, could bill himself as the host who "interviews the people other people are interested in seeing – naked."

Situation comedies surfeited our screens last season; this fall they threaten to engulf the sated set-owner in the skimmed milk of human kindness. Invariably their dramatis personae are living testimonials to the eternal verities of group dynamics: all are members of (or dearly beloved by) an outer-directed, thing-centered, lower-middle-brow, suburban-dwelling, offensively good-natured family. In "Life with Daddy-o," at right – a refreshingly realistic revamping of this saccharine format – we introduce a counter-philosophy that promises to promote cross-country converts: Altogetherness. This week's show features our hero returning home one evening to find his ducktailed son jitterbugging with a jail-bait jill to the frenzied rhythms of Mom's mad bongo beating, while Sis dabbles abstractedly in the corner. Dad is understandably appalled: his beans and beer have already been devoured. On "Buzzie and Harriet," a similar family chronicle, teenagers Ricky and Ticky get their kicks playing postgraduate post office in the family game room. TV gumshoes tread a well-worn trail of platitudinous plot-lines, but nude variations aplenty suggest themselves to the unclothed creative mind. Even the inescapable lineup of hard-boiled yeggs would be enlivened with an appearance by a soaking suspect yanked unceremoniously from her Saturday-night shower – though neither she nor the fuzz have a thing on her. On "Terry Mason," the D.A. could cannily call a winsome witness for the prosecution to improve on the usual hiked-hem gambit by testifying under oath, but not under wraps. Scuba-sleuth Pike Nelson could take the plunge with a mermaid, wax envious of her fishy friends, throw in the sponge when he realizes it's too late to put a tail on her. Other possibilities:"Hawaiian Eyeful," "Surfside Sex," "The Unmentionables," and sans alias: "Naked City,""77Sunset Strip."

Flacks are fond of calling videoaters "adult" – ostensibly because the heroes no longer kiss their cayuses in fade-out clinches. Unfortunately, these maladjusted mavericks haven't yet learned to fully transfer their affections to two-legged fillies. With less horse opera and more horseplay, though, the TV Western may not have to head for the last roundup just yet. In this episode of "Sunstroke," for instance, a distaff desperado disarms Sheriff Highpockets with her décolletage and plugs him between his close-set eyes. If you remain unmoved by all this TV titillation, you can always invite your playmates to sit around (as La Monroe said of her famous calendar pose) with nothing on but the radio.