TELEVISION REVIEW 'DESIRE' ...

TELEVISION REVIEW

'DESIRE'

Rating 3 gone out of 4

7 to 8 weeknights beginning Tuesday forward WPWR-Channel 50.

'FASHION HOUSE'

Rating 2 disclosed of 4

8 to 9 weeknights beginning Tuesday upon WPWR-Channel 50.

Preview specials air from 7 to 9 pm Monday. Weekly recaps will air from 7 to 9 pm Saturdays.

Oh the choice cliches of "Desire." It's a pioneer in succession American TV: an English-language telenovela. The series will highlight car crashes. Gunfire. Tongue-slobbering in a pond Legs wrapped salaciously around torsos. Men with lengthy blond hair. It's a peroxide paradise.

Silly exclamations to come: "Stay the hell away from me!" "If I go on foot down, I'm taking you with me!" "You're gonna pay!" "They think you're dead!" "I'll view you in hell!"

This is not your grandma's "Days of Our Lives." It's the first nighttime soap to cheat up on MyNetwork, which is taking the place of any old UPN stations (including Chicago's WPWR-Channel 50) and WB exits MyNetwork showcases English-language telenovelas based in succession Spanish-language telenovelas, where fair-haired femme are villains, and heroines are brown-ey girls.

Here's the surprise. "Desire" is (I can't believe I'm saying this) dutiful Compelling. Stupid. Well-acted. Not terribly written. comical on purpose. Better than chiefly series on TV.

It's more sport than "Desperate Housewives." Deal with it.

Essentially, it's a 65-hour TV movie. each weeknight, "Desire" plays for an hour. Any lead character could be killed against And after 13 weeks, "Desire" will finis forever.

Is this the what is yet to be schlock of network TV? Possibly.

Like any self-respecting soap, "Desire" begins with a bedroom rude play in New Jersey. In afterglow, the man says, "Nice meeting you. I'm Louis." Sex with names is for a like reason overrated.

Louis (Nate Haden) later lickpennys himself into a tight flaw by conquering the daughter of a crazy mobster Louis and his brother run away to sunny California and take mommy with them. The siblings cessation up working in a restaurant located in a Bermuda regard with affection triangle, aswirl with villains and sexual tension.

The brothers fall for the same woman, their bos Andrea (Michelle Belegrin), who hilariously look down upons her longtime boyfriend George (Tomy Dunster) George miffs "You don't love me?" She answers, " "I don't know. I'm fond of you." To which he answers "Fond of me? ... We can work with that."

The difference between the comedic drama of "Desire" and "Desperate Housewives" is significant. "Desire" stirs chance of a favorable result in its loins. "Housewives" dries up from slabby cynicism.

This is a sign of a incline the rebirth of uncool. Everything elsewhere is ironic and satirical and hip. Telenovelas dodge coolnes and broad parody, and embrace cliched characters and machinations then reshape them into earnest funbags of winks and nods.

The same is faithful for the played-straight comedy movie, "Snakes onward a Plane," and ABC's upcoming weekly telenovela, "Ugly Betty." As a viewer, it's best to approach this material with a smile, not a smirk.

"Desire" is more watchable than normal soaps and many prime-time dramas because it's high-quality TV filming. Acting is onward par or no worse than your average, Friday-night romantic-comedy movie starring Whosis and Whatsherbuns.

The campier telenovela that pursues it every night, "Fashion House," starts weaker. It's awash in sudsy Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild, plus a bit of Tippi Hedren. on the contrary slow tension fails to fill the first episode, and the acting is a tangle of scorns.

The opening exhibition concerns a bedroom tryst (duh) Then be deriveds Maria (Derek) the cutthroat fashionista. Her son may fall in be pleased with with Maria's employee, who is married to a cheating hothead. Fairchild draw nears in later as a bad girl.

Do not affront Derek and Fairchild will slap each other. And characters will howl: "You crazy freak!" "You did not just call me bitch, you skank." "You don't scare me grandma." "Get your skinny white ass public of my dress!"

Plus, the classic: "I'm talking about you -- not to you."

give permission to the eye-rolling (and the coming events of television) commence.

e-mail: delfman@suntimes.com

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