Tv Briefs - August 14, 2003

Latin Kings:

A Street Gang Story

(HBO) 9:30 tonight

Filmmaker Jon Alpert boldly chops his way into the urban jungle to study the king and the warriors of a New York street gang, and the Emmy-winning director blazes a startlingly vivid, dramatic trail into an empire of Latin pride, murder and drug culture.

In the slightly overlong but compelling documentary, Alpert courageously documents the personal and power-filled days and nights of Antonio "King Tone" Fernandez, the charismatic "Inca," or leader, of the Latin King Nation of the Big Apple.

Despite publicly advocating peace and civic-minded affiliations and earning support from some community groups, King Tone and the Latin Kings are hardly on the best-liked list of the District Attorney's Office. Authorities eventually will get two-time felon Fernandez back behind bars.

In the mix are visits with other factions vying for control of the streets and surveillance clips supplied by the District Attorney's Office showing mayhem allegedly wrought by members of the Latin Kings.

The man who would remain king indulges in banter with the filmmaker and levels some darkly humorous, not-so-veiled threats. King Tone clearly enjoys being the focus of attention.

This is the kind of behind-the-scenes access that makes a docu intensely involving.



The Alan Brady Show

(TV Land) 10 p.m. Sunday

Is time flying or what? This is "The Alan Brady Show," now marking its 50th year on primetime television — the 1,649th episode!

It's a show on the show inside "The Dick Van Dyke Show," in which Dick Van Dyke was the head writer on the show starring Carl Reiner as the fierce star of stars, the bewigged Alan Brady. He's the same as ever — as caustic, cruel and crazy as ever.

If you're having trouble following all that, this is a half-hour takeoff cartoon honoring Reiner's character, and it is the normal-rerun network TV Land's first original animation. Reiner, who created "TDVDS," wrote this and voiced it as star Brady with the help of Van Dyke, Rose Marie, Gary Owens, Carol Leifer and others, as executive produced by George Shapiro and Howard West, developed-produced by Sal Maniaci and directed by David Barosin.

Plotwise, Brady's cowered staff can't come up with a celebratory concept to mark the occasion, but our star does — a special, "Who Wants to Marry Alan Brady?"

Will it be Alan's dim-bulb tootsie? Or will it be her hotter mom?

Or does it really matter? There's a sparkling possibility here but no sparkling script. Nor does the flat animation help the amusement. Alan Brady is really a single joke and spreading it over 30 minutes spreads it pretty thin.