The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

IF George Lucas and company can keep up this pace, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles should be positively captivating. Lucas has managed to create the seemingly impossible: a new weekly series for television with very nearly the same improbable sense of spectacle and adventure as the breath-defying ''Indiana Jones'' movies on which he and director Steven Spielberg collaborated. [4 Mar 1992, p.9F]

Young Indy is TV's answer to archaeology, a sweeping and ambitious depiction of the 20th Century. It has been shot around the world, against spectacular scenery, by noted international directors. And it is a triumph for executive producer George Lucas, who makes his passion for history absorbing through an outlandish premise. [4 Mar 1992, p.E1]

Spectacular...You have never seen educational value so imaginatively and colorfully packaged. [4 Mar 1992, p.C1]

It's as rich and sumptuous as maybe any series that TV has produced, on both sides of the cameras. [4 Mar 1992, p.C1]

The creator of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies apparently spared no cost in producing Young Indiana, a weekly series for the small screen that feels more like one of his wide-screen opuses - glossy, state-of-the-art high adventure with epic overtones. [4 Mar 1992]

Lucas has created an exhilarating history lesson - something you won't find anywhere else on the tube. In The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, modern moviemaking know-how meets that wonderfully old-fashioned notion that nothing is more entertaining than the clash of ideas. [4 Mar 1992, p.39]

Though boringly narrated by a 93-year-old Indy, the tales are the stuff of many a kid's adventure story - back when kids still read. [4 Mar 1992, p.1D]

Each episode tries to shoehorn in bold a history and an ethics lesson with the period dress and picturesque ports of call. The result, though visually rich, is like a fuddy-duddy theme-park ride.

The show is more lushly pictorial than anything this side of the National Geographic Specials, and its seat-of-the-pants approach to history is peppy and playful. ... [But] Indy's adventures in the first episode are often unimaginative (the old mummy's-tomb-with-a-curse routine), and the flip dialogue is too forced.

O'Brien and second-half director Carl Schultz both bring some visual dazzle to the episode, but they cannot bring wooden actors to life. And although Flanery does bear some resemblance to how Harrison Ford may have looked as a youth, he is plainly well beyond 16. So far, George Lucas' great idea for a TV series built on Indiana Jones remains just that -- an idea. [3 Mar 1992, p.C-1]

Initial verdict: clunky.

What it all adds up to tonight, unfortunately, is something akin to a very slow camel or burro ride across long stretches of arid desert. There's dialogue galore, but comparatively little action and virtually no suspense.