Oprah's spiritual quest

There is a moment in the first episode of Oprah's Next Chapter, the new celebrity and spiritual travelogue starring Oprah Winfrey and also her interview subjects, that feels more like something out of This Is Spinal Tap than a star debriefing on a cable network ostensibly for women.

At the end of two television hours (!) together on last Sunday's premiere, Winfrey and Steven Tyler, the flamboyant Aerosmith front man and, more recently, American Idol judge, were in a forest in Tyler's native Sunapee, N.H. They had hiked there to find a bed of moss where Tyler says he discovered his spirituality as a young man.

They sat down on the moss, these two superstars in their respective realms, and each sniffed the moss. Tyler said something about the place reminding him of finding God in the music.

"I think God is not just in the music," Winfrey told the rocker, significantly. "I think God is the music." This assertion may or may not be true. (Was a supreme being really guiding the creation of Aerosmith's teen-lust rave-up "Walk This Way"?) But the fragrance of forest moss and the talk of God do seem to be an essence of Oprah's Next Chapter, the first wholly new series from Winfrey since her syndicated daytime program ended in May.

Preview episodes were not sent out for review, an interesting move considering that the channel the show is on - OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network - needs all the attention it can get. But publicity materials suggest this weekly series will be, more or less, Winfrey on a spiritual quest. And if that quest can somehow involve celebrities, so much the better.

Sunday night at 9, she visits mega-church preacher Joel Osteen. She'll spend time among Transcendental Meditation practitioners in Iowa and Hasidic Jews in New York (she is shocked that they have never watched TV, she tells them), and she'll visit with Star Wars impresario George Lucas.

None of this sounds like the kick in the pants Winfrey's viewer! ship-cha llenged cable network could use as it starts its second year. Religion is not, historically, a television ratings-grabber, and in-depth celebrity interviews already exist on the networks, where the likes of Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer regularly convene their own summits of the boldfaced names.

But the premiere, at least, did bring 1.1 million viewers, according to OWN - the network's second-highest rating ever (after the premiere of the reality show that went behind the scenes at The Oprah Winfrey Show). And it is certainly true that the Tyler interview came close to justifying its extraordinary length via a combination of personal revelation, guided by Winfrey's practiced, albeit sometimes heavy, hand, and those Spinal Tap moments.

Almost in spite of herself at times, she showed Tyler, in and around his Lake Sunapee retreat, as shaman and charlatan, showman and sap. And ever the silver-tongued charmer.

Tyler told Winfrey "you and I are peripheral visionaries" and "you're a magical being," and Winfrey closed her eyes to receive the compliment. In one moment he was holding flowers she brought him from her home; in another he was holding her hand or stroking what appears to be a raccoon tail that dangles, naturally enough, from his waist.

Then he removed a sock to show the gnarled toes that led him down one painkiller-and-other-drugs "rabbit hole." Whether schmoozing Oprah or flirting with teenage Idol contestants, the man is good television.

But for all the fascination provided by Tyler's outsized personality and turned-up-to-11 life, things kept coming back to Oprah.

She interviewed Tyler's 33-year-old daughter, Mia, about feeling abandoned, as well as Tyler's longtime squeeze and former band accountant, Erin Brady, about his monogamy or lack thereof.

After each delivered a touching anecdote about redemptive aspects of the rock star's behavior, the producers let us see Winfrey clapping her hands in excitement at the television mome! nt that had been created, telling them "that was great." It would be nice to think this was meant to give us a peek backstage, to reveal the artifice of the celebrity interview. But, really, it seemed intended mostly to shift the spotlight back to Winfrey. If she can't be the one doing the revealing, then she can at least be orchestrator and validator.

And in that way, at least, Oprah's Next Chapter reads a whole lot like Oprah's last chapter: a lot of well-made television, and a whole lot of the person making it.