TV REVIEWS : Lovestyles of the Rich and Bi-Coastal

Middle America’s perceived obsession with the domestic problems of the wealthy continues unabated with tonight’s TV movie, “Danielle Steel’s ‘Changes,’ ” in which a well-off heart surgeon (Michael Nouri) and a well-off newscaster (Cheryl Ladd) marry and deal with combining their respective families. It’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” meets “The Brady Bunch,” and it’s pretty icky.

Airing tonight at 9 on Channels 4, 36 and 39, this exercise in fantasy follows in the NBC tradition of putting Danielle Steel-based pictures up against sports programming on other networks, so no pains have been taken to target it beyond the soap-opera crowd--though there’s much more drama in the average weekday half-hour than there is in two here.

While the menfolk watch the ballgame in the other room, the presumed audience of female Steel fans gets a ludicrous happily-ever-after ending, preceded by two hours of trumped-up troubles that never seem all that troubling, ultimately designed to garner a jealous response among the hoi polloi of We should have such problems .

The problems are thus: Doc’s important transplant practice is in L.A., while his future bride, the next Jane Pauley, has just landed a network morning show assignment in New York--your basic bi-coastal dilemma. After some soul-searching, she gives up her anchor dreams to join hubby on the left coast. But not everybody in this expanded nuclear family--she has two kids, he has three, plus a testy housekeeper--gets along. And a couple of the children get along too well (nudge nudge).

Once “Changes” gets past the courtship phase, and the kids get more play, its second hour is more bearable than the first--which isn’t saying much. Don’t expect many redeeming factors in a movie in which director Charles Jarrott’s sole interesting touch is an unintentionally amusing point-of-view shot from a clinically dead patient of the doctor’s. (It’s not just the angle that may have the viewer identifying with that corpse.)

Speaking of changes, have your remote at the ready; this goo could well turn a sports-hater’s attention to basketball after all.