Television: Children’s Boon for Adults

For adults who long ago decided that the only TV drama worth watching was the evening news and the Super Bowl, a boon awaits in a minuscule series of specials called CBS Children’s Hour. That’s right—children’s specials. If J.T., the first offering, is any indication, children and adults alike will be stimulated, moved and entertained by a kind of drama almost never found on commercial television. J.T., which will be broadcast on Saturday, Dec. 13,* is an original story written by Jane Wagner and beautifully directed by Robert Young. It is, mercifully, different from most of the pap usually fed to the kiddies on Saturday mornings. Or to any age group at any time, for that matter. “We wanted a children’s drama,” explained Mike Dann, senior vice president for programming at CBS television. “But we didn’t want Disney. We didn’t want a story about a cat in Scotland, in other words.”

Real and Horrifying. What they got instead was a realistic and sometimes horrifying account of J.T., a Negro boy played by Kevin Hooks, son of N.Y.P.D.’s Robert Hooks. J.T. is trying desperately to grow up in Harlem amidst peeling paint, dank buildings, rubbish-filled lots and a way of life that is guaranteed to turn any American Dream into a nightmare. He steals a transistor radio, then befriends a decrepit street cat. He is set upon by two older boys determined to steal the radio from him.

Out of this develops an hour of television drama that few viewers will have trouble identifying with, though its story is far from the lives of the nation’s more privileged. There are the familiar dilemmas of childhood (stealing, lying, response to bullying), the familiar authority figures (mother, adult store owners, schoolteacher) and familiar emotions (fear, love, sorrow).

After moments of intense despair and fear, the climax does turn out neatly and somewhat happily. But that is quite acceptable simply because the audience has been transported—not into make-believe but out of one kind of reality into another.

Unfortunately, there are only two more programs scheduled for the Hour series. Why? “J.T. cost $300,000 as compared with the $7,000 we normally spend on that hour for kids,” explains Dann. But it was worth it.

812 noon-1 p.m. E.S.T.; 11 a.m.-12 noon, C.S.T. and P.S.T.; 10 a.m.-ll a.m. M.S.T.