Sassy ‘Sister Kate’ Is One Nun Who Shouldn’t Be Crossed

The new director of a Catholic orphanage named Redemption House enters for the first time and immediately engages in dueling stereotypes with one of her unruly young charges, a black 7-year-old named Neville.

“You’re really a nun?” he asks, suspiciously.

“Yes,” she replies.

“Then where is your guitar?”

“I don’t know. Where are your tap shoes?”

Suffice to say that NBC’s “Sister Kate” is far less The Singing Nun than The Zinging Nun. It’s also the boldest, brassiest, funniest comedy series of the new season, one of three sitcoms--the others are “Homeroom” on ABC and “Major Dad” on CBS--premiering this weekend.

By using its existing hits to help launch “Sister Kate,” NBC is ensuring maximum initial exposure for this promising newcomer before cutting it adrift in the choppy waters of CBS-dominated Sunday night. “Sister Kate” opens at 9:30 tonight (on Channels 4, 36 and 39) after that huge hit “The Golden Girls” and adds another special premiere at 8:30 p.m. Thursday behind that huge hit “The Cosby Show” before settling into its regular 8 p.m. Sunday time slot.

On Sundays it will follow “The Magical World of Disney,” an incompatible--and irresponsible--pairing if there ever was one, for the sometimes racy tone of “Sister Kate” makes it anything but a show for young kids and one far better suited to 9 p.m. and after.

That issue aside, “Sister Kate” has an edge and an urbane, wit-sharpened brashness that lift it far above most TV comedies.

Credit smart, funny writing (by executive producers Frank Dungan, Jeff Stein and Tony Sheehan on the pilot). Sister Kate to the seven life-toughened kids with whom she now resides: “Shouldn’t you children be going to school . . . or making license plates or something?”

Credit Stephanie Beacham (formerly of “Dynasty”), who crackles with mocking, slashing impertinence amid this controlled chaos as Sister Kate. She’s an acid-tongued disciplinarian who instills the fear of . . . nun in the “recalcitrant, unrepentant, nasty and somewhat deranged” kids she supervises. She likes them, but not too much. With Noam Pitlik directing, it’s just a terrific performance.

The orphans of Redemption House range from a teen-age girl who chain smokes (Hannah Cutrona) to a 12-year-old in a wheelchair (Penina Segall). However, some of Sister Kate’s best moments are with Neville (Joel Robinson), a self-proclaimed Jamaican who addresses her as “nun” and wants to “get a job as a towel boy and dry off rich American women.”

Some of the pilot concerns the social aspirations of teen-age April (Erin Reed), who is rescued from date rape by a golf putter-wielding Sister Kate. The nun’s original hilarious line--”I’ve come to hit some balls”--won’t be heard by viewers. A softer line was substituted--by “mutual consent” of NBC and the producers, according to Stein.

Although the orphans usually do their best to avoid adoption, meanwhile, Thursday’s episode finds a black 9-year-old named Violet (Alexaundria Simmons) putting on her Shirley Temple act to impress a white couple interested in adopting her. They bring her a black doll and take her to a Spike Lee movie.

Not that “Sister Kate” always does the right thing. The sister’s Catholicism is low profile almost to a fault. Moreover, there are times when predictability and cheap sentiment intervene and, inevitably, hearts of gold thump beneath the characters’ rough exteriors. Yet here at least is a comedy that makes you laugh far more than it makes you cringe.

That is more that can be said of “Homeroom” and “Major Dad.”

“Homeroom” opens Sept. 24 in its regular 8:30 p.m. Sunday time slot (on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42). But “Homeroom” gets an early introduction at 8:30 tonight behind “Mr. Belvedere.”

The protagonist is Darryl Harper (Darryl Sivad), a fourth-grade teacher at an inner-city school. He and his med-student wife Virginia (Penny Johnson) live rent-free in a brownstone owned by her stern father, Phil Drexler (Bill Cobbs), who lives upstairs and is constantly harassing Darryl about having given up a promising advertising job to teach unruly kids.

Harper and Cobbs perform nicely, with the only fun in “Homeroom” coming on the home front, where the Darryl-Phil squabbles have an amusing slant. In school, however, “Homeroom” is a zero, especially when resolving a controversy stemming from a math competition pitting Darryl’s class against kids from a snooty private school. The ending is not only preachy, syrupy and manipulative, but also has Darryl presenting folk legend about Abraham Lincoln to his students as fact.

The Marine legend--but too little wit--underlies “Major Dad,” premiering at 8 p.m. Sunday (on Channels 2 and 8), a day before appearing in its regular 8 p.m. Monday time slot.

Unmarried Maj. J. D. (Mac) MacGillis (Gerald McRaney) is a tough, rigid Marine who meets reporter Polly Cooper (Shanna Reed), a single parent of three daughters, when she interviews him for a story she is doing for her paper. He hates the story, but likes her.

They argue. They argue again. “See the hill, take the hill,” he declares. So a few days after meeting this woman, whose liberal values he despises, he consummates their bickering with a marriage proposal. Naturally, she’ll accept, because she hates his conservative values, too.

TV’s ways are mysterious.

There’s nice chemistry between McRaney and Reed, and “Major Dad” has its moments. MacGillis, seeming to lament his status at mid-life: “Look at me now! Forty-two years old. I’m still fast-sliding down ropes, crawling through mud.” Pause. “God, I love it!”

Minus the combat gear, however, “Major Dad” is an echo of other comedies about converging combatants and eclectic families. Traditionally, either separate families are merged or, as in this case, a discordant element is introduced into an existing family.

Everyone will clash as Super Soldier attempts to impose his own sense of order on his new family while also revealing a soft, sensitive side to his militarism. Gosh, how will they all get along? The bigger question is whether you want to watch them try. As a Marine might say: Negative!