Kay McFadden / Times staff columnist
Hot male leads missing from TV fantasy land

MONTY BRINTON / CBS Jason Alexander stars as Tony Kleinman, a well-regarded sports talk-show host and columnist who struggles to get the respect and admiration from his family that he gets from his fans in "Listen Up."

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It's ladies' choice this fall. Shows want our ratings. Advertisers want our money. Adult women are the new No. 1 demographic, belles of the Nielsen ball.

And the networks are prepared to do almost anything to win our favor — except give us hot-looking men. Prime time should be prime territory for strapping eye candy. Instead, the night overflows with chubby hubbies, craggy cops and creepy moguls.

Jason Alexander. Dennis Farina. Donald Trump. The male stars of virtually every ABC and CBS comedy. Even the cartoons are fantasy killers: John Goodman's lump of a lion on "Father of the Pride" makes Homer Simpson almost seem erotic.

What happened? When did the classic handsome leading man disappear from broadcast television? (George Clooney, we hardly knew ye.)

	NBC UNIVERSAL Dennis Farina is a craggy detective on "Law & Order." His looks aren't arresting.

Tracey Cartwright is group broadcast director of OMD, which buys TV and radio spots for advertising agencies like DDB Seattle. She may be the only woman in town who watches more TV than me.

I test my outrage on her, fearing it won't resonate in the practical Northwest.

"Oh God, yes," says Cartwright. "What a lot of women go to TV for is escape. And even though we may hide it under our fleece, there's a sensibility here that does make good looks matter."

Cartwright at first suggests watching The WB network. It's made a cottage industry of pubescent, soul-tortured pretty boys ever since "Dawson's Creek."

	SURVEY
	Who's your favorite hottie? Julian McMahon of "Nip/Tuck" Peter Krause of "Six Feet Under" Josh Duhamel of "Vegas" Taye Diggs of "Kevin Hill" Matthew Fox of "Lost" Jason Bateman of "Arrested Development" View Results

On the other hand, she concedes, "There's not a lot there in terms of grown-up men. Legal men."

Exactly. It's as if the networks determined somewhere along the line that once women attain maturity, we're only supposed to care about personality.

Ha! Even if that weren't patently false in real life, TV is supposed to be fantasy — and not the fantasy of male writers imagining a world where fat, balding guys get all the babes.

History proves male stars weren't always so dowdy. Just as dinosaurs once roamed the Earth, so did the dashing private eye, the matinee-idol MD and the lusty cowboy.

Even domesticated dads were lookers: John Forsythe, Bill Bixby, Michael Landon. Sitcoms have never featured studs, but it's worth citing (even to our embarrassment) the days of wine and roses with Alan Alda, Ted Danson and 2004 exception-to-the-rule Matt LeBlanc.

Cartwright says the rise of reality TV contributed to the downfall of fantasy and a small-screen infatuation with "ordinary" people. She dryly notes that even when male contestants are attractive, "The production values don't make them George Clooney."

There's that name again. In any conversation about hubba-hubba he-men, Clooney is inevitably invoked. He's like a talismanic representative from the lost world of TV hunks.

In fact, one friend has the Unified Theory of Clooney. After he left and "ER" remained a hit, she insists, "That just showed everybody we could do without."

An entirely unscientific survey of female co-workers supplies some other ideas about the curious demise of the gorgeous guy.

	SCOTT GARFIELD / ABC Dennis Franz of "NYPD Blue" somehow gets the girl.

On a hastily assembled list of Times TV hotties, most of the candidates that repeatedly pop up — former "Sex and the City" star Chris Noth, Peter Krause of "Six Feet Under," Julian McMahon of "Nip/Tuck," Clive Owen of BBC fame — are from cable.

Danger is a key component of sex appeal. Maybe cable took the edgy, alluring men along with the edgy, alluring shows.

Then again, the networks have churned out an endless stream of dark, gritty police procedurals in recent years. Surely these provide a proper vehicle for the dark, virile detective who drives dames to distraction.

Lots of luck. "CSI" and "Law & Order" both suffer from acute Sipowiczitis: a form of realism that insists officers of the law are world weary, emotionally oppressed and entirely too absorbed in their jobs and AA meetings to flirt.

I know fans will defend their heroes by insisting the characters played by David Caruso, William Petersen, Jerry Orbach and Vincent D'Onofrio have hidden, smoldering depths.

But Mount St. Helens has to erupt once in awhile, or it's just a pile of congealed rock. The modern TV flatfoot is a poor stand-in for his wolf-whistling ancestors, and we are the orphaned rhesus monkeys clinging to wire-and-cloth substitutes.

Network TV isn't entirely devoid of dashing manhood. Times nominees included Josh Duhamel of "Vegas," Blair Underwood of "LAX" and Rob Lowe of "dr. vega$." (James Spader of "Boston Legal" was withdrawn because of his "Pillsbury doughboy-ish face.")

Unfortunately, don't bet on them being around next year. They're all struggling with mediocre ratings.

Maybe the weak quality and poor time slots of these shows are proof that male network executives and producers — hired for brains, not beauty — are on a subliminal course to destroy their macho TV competition. Then they'll have the chicks to themselves.

Endurance is an important quality because we are, after all, women. Inveterate cuddlers, we're not really interested in a show that's out the door before we ever got to know it.

That only leaves a few new hopefuls on which to pin our girlish hopes and pillowed dreams: Taye Diggs in UPN's "Kevin Hill," Gary Sinise in CBS' "CSI: New York" and James Denton in ABC's "Desperate Housewives."

Diggs, the supremely charming former supermodel, requires little explanation unless you are dead from the neck up and down. Sinise's character is poised to be the first "CSI" chief that combines an enticing appearance with seductive vulnerability.

"Desperate Housewives," however, may be the series that delivers the goods. At the center of a bevy of lovely women is mystery plumber and object of desire Mike Delfino, played by Denton.

Last week, "Desperate Housewives" was the No. 1 series on TV. As OMD's Cartwright notes, it's shrewdly scheduled in the 9 p.m. spot once occupied by "Sex and the City."

No accident, that. We've gone too long without a show that offered the fringe benefit of making us quiver in our stilettos.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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