TV Review : Lessons to Be Learned for ‘Single Women’

So poor Susan, recently divorced and now newly doctorized in the psychotherapy business, meets architect Ross--handsome, warm, sensitive, charming, witty and knowledgeable about wine. Next up, a Nobel Prize for great guy.

Susan starts ministering to a group of women entangled with married men--and discovers that Mr. Perfecto is likewise married!

Therein lies “Single Women, Married Men,” which replaces “Dallas” and “Falcon Crest” on CBS tonight at 9. Michele Lee is Susan and Lee Horsley is Ross.

The essences of the story and subplots were borrowed from San Diego therapist JoAnn Bitner, who says that her first husband philandered and then, after the divorce, she fell in love with a married man. (We called and she told us that her boyfriend didn’t look like Horsley: “I should be so lucky.”)

Bitner developed a “support group” for mistresses afflicted with married men, as in our story, and executive producer-star Lee suggested this endeavor, which is justified by a statistic cited by one character that “70% of women in major cities have at least one sexual experience with a married man.”

Wow, if these women watched the show, the ratings would. . . .

There are lessons to be learned, particularly in the accumulation of gnarled rationales that people work out for their romance lives. But for all its probable truths, the movie seems measured and false, mostly the fault of insipid dialogue. And the glossy look on everybody is very distracting. The clothing budget could have dressed San Marino.

The dilemmas are delicately if not totally resolved here. But Woody Allen has another concept in his current feature, “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Mistress Dolores (Anjelica Huston) threatens to tell Judah’s wife about their affair and Judah (Martin Landau) has her killed.