H.E.L.P. (Saturday at 7 p.m., Ch. 4), ABC's promising new action drama about an experimental New York City emergency services unit, has more than its share of p.r.o.b.l.e.m.s.
That's too bad, because "H.E.L.P.," which is shot entirely in New York, has a few splendid actors fighting to breathe life into what is rather formulaic writing.The show is about the experimental, and fictional, Harlem Eastside Lifesaving Program, which combines police, fire and paramedic services under a single commander, fire Battalion Chief Pat Meacham.
The politically beleaguered Meacham is ably played by John Mahoney, a Tony award winner in John Guare's "House of Blue Leaves" on Broadway.
Chief Meacham, Mahoney and New York City have their work cut out for them in the batty pilot episode written by executive producers Dick Wolf and Christopher Crowe, and directed by Crowe.
"H.E.L.P." opens on a child floating face down in a bathtub. Cut to child's hair. Zoom in on horrified reaction of older sister. Cut to panicked mom. Mom runs past teddy bear. Cut to calm dispatcher. Panicked mom. Ambulance rolling. Overhead shot of unconscious child. Cut to haggard, unshaven, chain-smoking dispatcher telling mom he will coach her in CPR.
At some point, one becomes aware that the scene has the same style, texture and "warmth" of commercials we get these days from large multinational corporations. The susceptible viewer will feel immediately compelled to run out and buy a cellular phone or something. The sequence is manipulative, shallow and cheap. Check it against the commercial that immediately follows.
There's an exciting sequence of a helicopter evacuation from a burning tugboat in the East River. The operation gets Meacham's politically touchy program into conflict with his supervisor and mentor, a plump, smooth district chief wonderfully played by John Finn.
There's another wonderful performance from Brad Sullivan, playing a coarse, demanding older firefighter who plagues the Sensitive Rookie (Tom Breznahan). The old pro is the most interesting character in the episode, but there's every indication this will be a one-time appearance by Sullivan, and that is genuinely too bad.
"H.E.L.P." throws in some arson, a barely comic incident in which a cougar prowls a tenement cellar, official corruption, an implausibly swift arson investigation and an unbelievably pat ending.
In the 44-plus minutes of Ernest Dickerson's swooping photography, you will become tired of the overhead shot and atmospheric lighting of smoky offices and unsmoky burning buildings.
Believability is something this show needs if it is to survive, for it seems to have been conceived as "Hill Street Blues" with fire engines.
Responsibility for that must lie with Wolf, who was co-executive producer of "Miami Vice" in its last two years and was executive script consultant for "Hill Street Blues."
Publicists for "H.E.L.P." promise us "the same gritty, ground-breaking style" that made a hit of "Hill Street Blues."
That gritty ground, though, is pretty much broken, and what "H.E.L.P" gives us is pretty much just another firefighter-cop-paramedic show.
That's a great pity to this reviewer, for there is something fundamentally dramatic about a line of work that sometimes requires human beings to run into burning buildings and crawl around on the floor in search of their fellow human beings.
Until "H.E.L.P." can convey that, it is in t.r.o.u.b.l.e.