PASADENA, Calif. — If you're holding your breath waiting for James Garner to play detective Jim Rockford in another made-for-TV movie, you're going to turn awfully blue. The actor says he absolutely, positively will never step into the role again.
"There will not be another 'Rockford,' " he said. And he doesn't sound at all unhappy about that.
"For one thing, it's just about had it. Come on!" he said. "I mean, that was 27 years ago when we did our first one. He's getting old. And I just think we've milked it to death.
"I did six years of it, and then did, what, I think eight two-hour movies of it, which was 10, 12 years later. Enough already."
But it's not just that he thinks the "Rockford" franchise is played out.
"It's really too physically demanding for me," Garner said. "I don't want to work that hard. . . . That's a tough show to do. I don't have any legs left because of that show."
Which is not to say that he's retiring. He's just signed on for what will be a less demanding role than reprising Rockford — he'll play a tough multi-millionaire who buys the hospital in the last four episodes of "Chicago Hope" this spring.
(Chances are, it won't be a long-term role. "Hope" is unlikely to return for an eighth season in the fall.)
And Garner isn't avoiding work. He has even put his Santa Barbara vineyard/home, where he had thought to spend time in at least semi-retirement, up for sale. Garner says he can't retire.
"I have a wife who is a really good shopper," he joked.
"I don't think I planned to retire," Garner said. "I just figured as I got older, there would be less work. And it turned out I've worked as much in the last five or six years as I ever worked, so maybe I'm not going to slow down as much as I thought I would."
Garner just finished a movie called "Space Cowboys," in which he co-stars with Clint Eastwood. Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland. (They play former astronauts who never made it into space who are called upon to go up and fix a troubled space station.) He provided one of the voices in the upcoming animated feature film "Atlantis." And he's providing the voice of God in the upcoming NBC series "God, the Devil and Bob."
The voice-over work is something he's particularly fond of. "No wardrobe, no makeup, none of that foolishness," Garner said. "You just go up there and talk and do a character. It's great fun and easy."
Garner admits he was at least a bit worried about the Dreamworks animated film "Atlantis," however.
"That takes three or four years," he said of the production process. "A couple of years ago they said, 'We'll call you back in about 18 months to come in and do some more.' I said, 'Eighteen months? At my age, I don't buy green bananas.' So I hope I make it through to that one."
("Atlantis" is scheduled to open this summer.)
UNITED KINGDOM? Scotsman Alan Cumming provides the voice of the devil in the forthcoming NBC animated series "God, the Devil and Bob" — and he is particularly pleased that he does it by affecting a British accent.
"Absolutely," Cumming said. "It's the best thing about the entire job."
"WORLD" WON'T END: ABC's top executives denied reports that they're considering dropping "The Wonderful World of Disney" from their weekly lineup next fall and simply turning it into a series of irregularly scheduled specials.
"The Wonderful World of Disney' has been incredibly strong for us, and there are no plans to diminish that," said Stu Bloomberg, the co-chairman of the ABC Entertainment Television Group.
Well, "incredibly strong" is pure hyperbole — while big events like "Annie" have done boffo ratings, other weeks the numbers have been much lower. But Bloomberg didn't equivocate about the franchise's future, flatly stating that "World" will "absolutely" be back on the network's Sunday-night schedule in the fall.
Not that they're necessarily entirely pleased with the direction the franchise has taken since it was revived a couple of years ago. ABC also announced that, effective immediately, Susan Lyne — ABC's executive vice president of movies and miniseries — will assume responsibility for the "Wonderful World of Disney" lineup.
WHITHER T.G.I.F.? ABC executives wouldn't confirm, nor did they actually deny, that the two-hour T.G.I.F. block of supposedly family-friendly programming from 7-9 p.m. on Friday nights is going to go by the wayside.
Of course, you could argue that it already has. Shows like "Two Guys and a Girl" and "Odd Man Out" — shows that don't exactly fit the family-friendly category — have aired in that lineup over the past couple of seasons.
What ABC has found is that it still can't find shows that are appropriate and entertaining for young kids that their parents also want to watch. For example, "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" is very strong among kids but extraordinarily weak in all the adult demos, which makes it considerably less profitable to a network that targets 18-to-49-year-old viewers for its advertisers.
"Clearly, that is a time period we need to look at," said ABC Entertainment co-chairman Stu Bloomberg,. "We spend a lot of time talking about it. Should T.G.I.F. remain a two-hour block? Should it become a one-hour block? Whatever we do, Friday will still remain a haven for family viewing. If we were to shrink it to one hour, the comedies would still be family friendly. Or if we went with a one-hour drama, it would be family friendly."
Of course, experience has shown that what network programmers consider family friendly and what your average parent considers family friendly are often not the same thing.