On the air

A sitcom is a sitcom is a sitcom ... unless, of course, it comes from the unpredictable mind of David Lynch, the man who gave us the films Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, and the TV cliffhanger to end all TV cliffhangers, Twin Peaks. Now, Lynch has made the long-awaited jump into the prime-time half-hour sitcom scene with On the Air, (ABC, Saturday; CBC, Wednesday), a series about a series set in 1957. Here´s the story.

On the Air focuses mostly on the stars and crew of a live TV comedy - The Lester Guy Show. It specializes in behind-the-scenes politics, power and pratfalls. If that doesn´t tell you much, one of the wild and woolly ensemble cast members, Kim McGuire explains it this way, "It´s a live show, but it´s not done in front of an audience. My character [Nicole Thorn] works for the network boss, Bud Budwaller [Miguel Ferrer, the grufff and sarcastic FBI pathologist in Twin Peaks], but is madly in love with star Lester Guy [Ian Buchanan, Peaks´ fey fashion plate]. It´s unrequited love. He´s the ultimate narcissist and exploits her because he knows she will do anything for him."

Continues McGuire, "It has David´s special touch and he shoots it like a movie. It´s very farcical, a broad comedy with lots of slapstick. All the characters are larger than life and the stories are very outlandish."

And if that doesn´t exactly explain On the Air, consider the casting of McGuire herself. The New Orleans-born actress admits that she has a certain something which seems to ring "weird" when directors meet her. It started in 1990 when she caught the eye of filmmaker John (Pink Flamingos) Waters who was looking for an actress to play the biker Hatchetface in Cry-Baby, his try at mainstream movies.

McGuire made her movie debut wearing a rubber face, discolored braces and fake pimples. She happily looks a little more elegant this time around. "They called me masochistically courageous to have taken the part," she says with a smile. "Call it what you will but, after that film, when I went on job interviews producers expected to see this big, ugly six-foot-tall actress whereas I´m just five feet high. This series, I hope, will make people forget me as Hatchetface."

As for the rest of the cast, those who were not Twin Peakians, like McGuire, could have been. David Lander was Squiggy on Laverne & Shirley (and put in a brief appearance as taxidermist Mr. Pinkle on Twin Peaks). Marvin Kaplan was Henry, the phone man, on Alice. Tracy Walter played Jack Nicholson´s sidekick in Batman. And Mel Johnson, Jr., was Benny, the taxi driver in Total Recall. An eclectic lot.

McGuire may speak for everybody when she says that On the Air is giving her a chance to play broad comedy and still be "fairly" normal. Furthermore, "I always wanted to meet David Lynch," she says, "and so I can´t tell you how thrilled I am to be working on the show. And there are lots of other pluses. For example, it really feels great to show up groomed with my hair in place wearing decent clothes."