''China Beach'' has been created by the writer John Sacret Young (''Testament,'' ''A Rumor of War'') and William Broyles Jr., a former editor in chief of Newsweek and himself a Vietnam veteran. They have devised a rickety structure, but a good many of the sturdy personal details keep it from falling over.
They have also been given an appealing and very promising cast. Dana Delany is Nurse McMurphy, the young woman from Kansas who somehow finds herself coping with the horrors of war's casualties. Nan Woods is Cherry White, a sweet innocent who has joined the Red Cross to find her missing brother. And Chloe Webb is Laurette Barber, a flashy entertainer with a heart of gold from a poor small town in Pennsylvania. You're not the last person they see before they die.'' Or Beckett (Michael Boatman), the young black man who takes care of the dead, peering into a body bag and saying, ''Gotta be a reason why you're in there but I don't know what it is.'' Webb is listed as making a ''special guest appearance.'' Somebody had better get her back - fast.Īnd the show at its best: McMurphy snapping at a doctor on the pressures of nursing: ''You cut off their hand but you don't have to hold it. In accord with current standard practice, the time and place are evoked with period songs featuring everybody from Aretha Franklin and the Four Tops to the Mamas and the Papas. Among the men regularly wandering around this peculiar but oddly believable terrain are Dr. Richard (Robert Picardo), trying to get through the mess with exaggerated efficiency, and Boonie Lanier (Brian Wimmer), a battle veteran now content to play beach lifeguard and play his harmonica.
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