Academy Award nominee Danny Aiello stars in his first television series as private investigator Anthony Dellaventura, a decorated veteran police detective who has built his business on the kinds of cases the NYPD can't or won't handle. Helping people who have nowhere else to go, Dellaventura has recruited a team of skillful men and women who get things done the first time -- either by force or by seduction.
The team consists of Teddy Naples (Rick Aiello), an ex-cop who brings both brawn and brains to the job, Geri Zarias (Anne Ramsay), a sexy New York newcomer with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a body that men can't resist, and Jonas Deeds (Byron Keith Minns), a sharp-looking electronic surveillance ace with the power to infiltrate anywhere at anytime.
With strength tempered by compassion, Dellaventura stacks the deck for the little guy, whether or not they can pay, whether or not they remember to say thanks. For the first time in their lives, the people have found a hero -- and his name is Dellaventura.
After scoring big as the Last Don, Danny's back on the right side of the law as private eye Dellaventura. Do you think feature-film veteran Danny Aiello is up for the world of series television, as he takes the title role in the new avenging-investigator series Dellaventura?
Just listen to the way he greets David Caruso, whose own new show, Michael Hayes, precedes Dellaventura on Tuesday nights. Spying the orange-haired actor across a crowded Pasadena restaurant, Aiello rises from his table and bellows, his great arms outstretched, "David, you beautiful SOB, you better give me a good lead-in rating!" Caruso flashes a small grin, looks down at the floor, and calls out in a soft voice, "Do what I can for ya, Danny." * Danny Aiello knows from lead-in ratings? "It's a whole new hamburger," he says, sitting back down again and picking up his--well, his hamburger. "I'm learning the difference between movies and TV, but what I want to do is, I want to make the difference as small as possible. I want the quality--the excellence--to carry over."
* Aiello's The Last Don was CBS' top-rated miniseries last season, and network president Les Moonves says he called Aiello as soon as he saw Don's numbers and pushed the 64-year-old actor to do a series. So the big-screen mainstay (Moonstruck, Do the Right Thing, Ruby) is out to conquer TV as Anthony Dellaventura, an ex-cop so disgusted with the bureaucracy of the police force that he forms an investigation firm with a bunch of similar-minded mavericks, including Anne Ramsay (Helen Hunt's sister in Mad About You, and here a tough gal who's going to surprise you). Executive producer Richard DiLello says Moonves gave him a mandate: "He wanted 'The Equalizer with cojones,' so this is going to have a lot of action."
And the network is confident Dellaventura is qualified to go up against ABC's esteemed NYPD Blue; the scheduling makes a certain amount of sense, if you figure older viewers may well be looking for an alternative to Blue's down-and-dirtiness. "Danny has no interest in doing seminude love scenes, and his show is more black-and-white, less gray, than NYPD," says DiLello. "You're never in doubt about the strength of the hero here." Aiello is known to be a very hands-on performer who's not afraid to let his writers, directors, and producers know his opinions. "Yes, yes, but do I deserve a label like 'difficult'? I doubt it. Hey, I used to be a bouncer [in the New York comedy club The Improv]. That's where I learned to be firm with people, and I saw too many performers mess up their careers by agreeing to do things they didn't want to. So I don't."
Tell Aiello his show makes him look like a Kojak for the '90s and his eyes light up. "I love Telly Savalas!" he shouts. "If Dellaventura could be half as good as Kojak, I could do what I dream about for this show: make it so good, my friends would want to appear on it." These ain't just any friends, either. "I want to be able to call up my friend Bobby De Niro and say, 'Bobby, there's a little b-story [a short plotline] I think you're gonna love. Only take you two days to film.' And he, or my friend Harvey Keitel, or Chris Walken, they might say, 'Sure, 'cause you're doing good stuff there, with that Dellaventura.'" Aiello says he's already gotten Mikhail Baryshnikov to do a guest spot, "because Mickey is a good friend of mine, and we have a story about Little Odessa, the Russian section of Brooklyn--it's a part he wouldn't ordinarily be given."
Family is paramount to Aiello, and he agreed to do the show "only if Les [Moonves] let the whole thing be done in New York; my wife, Sandy, wanted to stay there." Dellaventura costars one of Aiello's four children, Ricky, as Teddy Naples, a swaggering wisecracker; another son, Danny, a Hollywood stunt coordinator, is a producer. "Nepotism?" asks Papa Aiello. "Maybe slightly the name of the game, but CBS feels they're both very qualified."
DELLAVENTURA CBS, 10-11 PM STARTS SEPT. 23 In a move from film to television, Aiello patrols New York's dark corners as a cop-turned-dick Aiello freely admits that the pilot episode of Dellaventura contains "a lot of expository bullsh--; the show's going to have more humor, more self-deprecation. I want this guy Dellaventura to be out there on the streets, approachable to anyone who's in trouble," he says finally. "He's going to be a rough guy who's also got a real heart. I want this show to be Touched by a Thug." --Ken Tucker EW-ONLINE