'Harbor' docks 'feel good' lives

Look out Capeside, the WB has a new port to dock in. Continuing the tradition of naming watery melodramas after waterways (the successful "Dawson's Creek" and UPN's reprehensible "Hyperion Bay"), this season presents "Safe Harbor."

Created by Brenda Hampton, also the creator and executive producer of the WB's highest rated series, "7th Heaven," "Safe Harbor" is family oriented, light-hearted and entertaining.

Courtesy of The WB Gregory Harrison and his family in the WB's post-Columbine "Safe Harbor."

Television melodrama veteran Gregory Harrison plays a caring and generous sheriff to whom the town Safe Harbor undoubtedly owes its name. He is the single father of three adolescent boys, Jeremy Lelliott, Christopher Khayman Lee and Jamie Williams, who are pretty enough to acquire Hanson status. Harrison divides his time between keeping the Beaver Cleaver-esque town in more than perfect order and giving golden advice to his less than troubled sons.

The family, which consists of the three boys, their father and their grandmother (Rue McClanahan), owns and lives in a motel. Each son occupies his own room, an unusual predicament which allows the boys unlimited privacy. For three teenage boys discovering the unusual species of girls, this provides much room for comic relief. Their father's greatest concern, "girls in the room," is often sneakily disobeyed.

Their father's generosity is boundless, however. He takes custody of a beautiful, blond teenage runaway, played by Chyler Leigh. Also present in the conglomeration of characters which create the 21st century version of a nuclear family is the youngest son's best friend, played by Orlando Brown.

McClanahan is responsible for most of the humor of "Safe Harbor," as she holds on to the sexy grandmother persona created in "The Golden Girls." She is the family's pseudo-mother, due to the unfortunate death of the real mother, whom the audience never meets.

"Safe Harbor" hurls the traditionalism of the 1950s into the new millennium. This "feel good" series is set in a land of fantasy with a facade mimicking reality. It combines the innocence of "Lassie" with the unavoidable issues of harsh reality such as sexual abuse, pregnancy and broken families.

Unlike many of the series on television today, "Safe Harbor" refuses to let go of the "happily-ever-after" theme.

09-20-99