Date and Issue: Number 88 / October 18, 1991.

Pages: 3 pages.

Pictures: 1 color photo.

Article: Article about "Daddy".

Author: Ken Tucker.

Country: USA.

Danielle Steel's frothy sagas of love lost and found, Palomino and Daddy, are prime-time alternatives to baseball this week. Daddy' s campy romance is the better bet.

NBC IS TOUTING it: double shot of romantic TV movies, DANIELLE STEEL'S PALOMINO (Oct. 21, 9-11 p.m.) and DAN­IELLE STEEL'S DADDY (Oct. 23, 9-11 p.m.), as an alternative to CBS' coverage of the World Series this week. According to an NBC press release, it's "part of the network's ongoing counterprogram­ming strategy against sports." Gee, what's the rest of the strategy, NBC? Breaking into CBS' broadcasts of the Series with footage of Bob Costas read­ing from Harlot's Ghost?

Palomino and Daddy, both based on big, thick Steel novels from the past de­cade, share the same structure: The cen­tral character's marriage falls apart, and after a period of lonely suffering, an ex­citing romance with a new, far more ide­al person makes life worth living again.

In Palomino, the central character is Samantha (Lindsay Frost of Mancuso FBI), a photographer whose husband (Peter Bergman) takes a powder in the movie's opening minutes. She: "It's be­cause I can't have a baby, isn't it?" He: "Now, you know things haven't been right between us for a while now." Trans­lation: He's got a babe on the side.

Suffering and alone, our gal Sam takes an assignment from LIFE maga­zine to shoot a photo layout on "the American cowboy." Searching for cow­boys, Sam goes to a California horse ranch run by an old friend played by Eva Marie Saint, who at one point ac­tually utters the line "There's just something about a man wearing a Stet­son." Saint's character introduces Sam to Tate, played with mustache-twitch­ing male ripeness by Lee Horsley (Par­adise, Matt Houston).

We know Sam and Tate will fall in love because, as happens on so many TV dramas this season, they initially hate each other's guts. Why? Because Sam tries to get Tate to pose for her photo essay and, well, durn it all, as one cowpoke says, "[Tate] just ain't used to workin' around women." From there it's only a matter of minutes before they kiss and feel the urge to take a bubble bath together, the room illuminated only by a ring of flickering candles around the tub. Sigh....

With acting as mechanical as the plot, Palomino is tedious. A better, giddier time may be had with Daddy, which, in contrast to Palomino, features a man­Step by Step's Patrick Duffy-as its sen­sitive central character. Daddy begins with the breakup of Duffy's marriage to Kate Mulgrew (Man of the People). "You have no idea what I need, much less who I am!" yells Mulgrew. We know this must come as a big shock to Duffy's doe-eyed ad-agency exec, Oliver Watson, because just a few minutes ear­lier we had heard him telling someone at work, "I have the life I always want­ed, and I'm smart enough to know it."

Hmmm-would you be willing to take an IQ test, Oliver? Turns out you didn't even realize your wife had become com­pletely fed up with raising three chil­dren and living in a gorgeous house. She wants to go back to college-and for a master's degree in literature. Boy, how's that for selfishness? And not only that, she wants to live on campus, with no kids pestering her, and, oh yes, honey: "I think that we should be able to see other people." Boinnng!

You've got to hand it to L. Virginia Browne's teleplay of Steel's book: With lightning narrative speed, Mulgrew's character goes from being a smart, independent woman to an evil harpy who reduces her gentle, caring hus­band and her abandoned children to sobbing saps.

Our Oliver endures a period of lonely suffering-remember the formula?- ' until he meets Charlotte Sampson (Lyn­da Carter), an actress and the spokes­model for his agency's new ad cam­paign. Charlotte is beautiful and kind and loves Oliver's children, but she must wrestle with her own private an­guish-she can't understand why she's never been asked to star in a Broadway play ("I worked hard and I learned my craft and I'm good!"). Oliver wins Charlotte's heart with his en­dearingly neurotic come-on lines-"I have been living in a halfway world that's driving me over the edge!"-and before you know it, Charlotte is cooing, "You're a very special man, Oliver."

Both of these TV movies are directed by Michael Miller, but Daddy is the bet­ter soap opera. Duffy and Carter are w superior sufferer-lovers, and while Browne's script features many more campy howlers than I've quoted here, the production itself never lapses into absurdity the way Palomino's loopy love scenes and florid triumph-over-ad­versity conclusion do.

Palomino and Daddy offer the es­capism of idealized love, in which pain gives way to passion and people get the chance to rebuild broken lives. Done ' better, this is the stuff of Wuthering Heights, of The Great Gatsby-of great fiction. Done this way, it's just counter­programming to baseball with ex­changes like: "With you, Oliver, I real­ize for the first time I am truly in love"; "And Charlotte, for the last time I have fallen in love." Kate Mulgrew with a master's degree in literature couldn't di­agram sentences like that. Daddy: C+ Palomino: D

© 1991 by Entertainment Weekly.

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