LIFE ON 'DEADLINE' DEBUT IS A DEAD END

By: Wayne Robins Newspaper Drama Premieres Today on NBC





Wallace Benton is a big-headed, full-bellied star columnist for the tabloid New York Ledger who calls 'em like he sees 'em, even though he doesn't always see 'em right.



Benton, a smart-alecky Mike McAlary-type played by Oliver Platt, is the protagonist of "Deadline," the weekly newspaper drama that premieres today on NBC.



Benton is meant to be a charming rogue, blustering but benign thanks to Platt's uninhibited habitation of his character. But members of the Fourth Estate who watch the first two episodes of "Deadline" will certainly ask the question: Is this good for the press?



The answer is no. As an investigative reporter, Benton has no hesitation in being dishonest with sources. "You lie with such incredible ease," said one of his awestruck female admirers. But he believes he lies for a higher purpose: "It's about the truth," Benton says without a shred of irony, in the first episode.



"Truth" may be the second most frequently occurring word in "Deadline." The most often heard word is apparently "Bushmills." Benton is almost never seen without a glass of the Irish whiskey in his hand. Whether he is a functioning alcoholic or merely the conduit for sneaky product placement (he orders his brand by name) is difficult to determine.



Charming rogue columnists may indeed dip their pens in many inkwells. And it's not unheard of for college professors to have sexual relations with their students. But that doesn't make it right - or appropriate. Benton, who, besides being a star columnist, teaches investigative reporting at a grad-level j-school like Columbia, doesn't seem to have a problem with it. His cute student sidekick also seems to be his lover. In an amusing but unfortunate scene, Benton's ex-wife Brooke - yes, music lovers, she's Brook(e) Benton - is moving her belongings out of the magnificent Tudor City apartment she'd shared with the columnist. Brooke, also a shrewdly manipulative reporter on the Ledger, is gulping down a martini when Benton's student paramour arrives, apparently with her own key.



In a misdirected attempt to level the sexual playing field in "Deadline," the second episode turns around the bitchin' babe of a city editor, Nikki Masucci, played by the leggy Bebe Neuwirth. The editor happens to be having a passionate physical relationship with one of the city's major politicians, even hiding him out in her love pad when the Ledger reveals that he's really a former 1960s-era radical wanted as a fugitive felon. "Deadline" makes clear that neither a male reporter nor a female editor will let anything stand between them and the opportunity for steamy sex.



Some credit is due series creator Dick Wolf, whose cop-and-lawyer characters in the hit series "Law & Order" live in a similarly murky ethical universe, for even posing the question of whether lying in the pursuit of truth is a legitimate tool of the news profession. And at least in the first episode, there is some pointed banter about race, which TV rarely addresses with such glib candor. "What's with the 'tude, bro?" Benton says to a pissed-off bartender who refuses to refill his glass. In this episode, Benton alienates a large number of his black readers with a Pulitzer Prize-winning series about the alleged perpetrators of a multiple homicide in a fast-food restaurant (think the "Wendy's massacre" in New York this year). Benton was so successful in dehumanizing the alleged killers that he helped put them on Death Row. But three days before the execution, there's an identical fast-food restaurant murder in Chicago, and Benton wonders whether his incendiary columns may result in putting the wrong "mad dogs" to sleep.



Benton enlists his investigative reporting students to help solve the case, but at first his sole black male student balks at his teacher's racial indelicacy. "Don't let my insensitivity keep you from your brilliant career at the Amsterdam News, where Tawana Brawley is still a martyr," Benton tells the student in front of the class.



Though the news-meeting scenes at the Ledger, a more liberal version of the New York Post with a staunchly conservative Brit editor in chief, have a realistic quality, some of Benton's stunts out in the field are simply absurd. It's beyond doubtful that even Clark Kent would tag along with a SWAT team raiding a murder suspect's hideout. Even more risible is a homicide cop leaving Benton alone in an interrogation room with a manacled suspect to allow him to manipulate the perp into a confession.



The second episode lacks even the lively patter of the premiere. When people aren't speaking in cartoon-bubble platitudes about Vietnam and the '60s, the script and camera makes City Editor Masucci look like a bitch in heat. This nasty caricature does much to undermine what "Deadline" needs as much as any real-life crew of reporters and editors: credibility.





Wayne Robins (wrobins@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering new media for E&P.





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