Daniel Lipman

Steve Martin gazed out at the Hollywood crowd as he hosted last year's Oscars and tried to surmise what the vast television audience must be thinking: "They're all gay," he said. Yet for all the jokes about the entertainment industry embracing--or, in the eyes of religious conservatives, promoting--the cause of gays and lesbians, this year's prime-time lineup will actually witness a sharp decline in the number of regular or recurring gay, lesbian and transgender characters.

With gay marriage, adoption rights and other civil issues dominating the headlines, is it any wonder "Queer as Folk" actors Robert Gant and Hal Sparks feel as if they are working at ground zero these days? "It's definitely very exciting," says Gant, who plays HIV-positive English professor Ben Bruckner in the Showtime drama, now in its fourth season on Sunday nights.

Glitz and good humor notwithstanding, the mood was bittersweet backstage at the 38th annual Emmy Awards on Sunday evening. That mood among winners at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium was set by: --Two best actresses, Sharon Gless of "Cagney & Lacey," and "The Golden Girls' " Betty White, who won over nominated co-workers on their own series. --By the writers of "An Early Frost," who earned their award for a drama about victims of the fatal disease AIDS.

More than 20 years after the event, an adult woman remembers that her father sexually molested her when she was a child--an experience so traumatic that she apparently erased it from her memory, until, while in therapy for help with a bad self-image, it all comes roaring back.

As Hollywood winds down its gay, gay summer -- dominated in media circles by Bravo's ubiquitous makeover series "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" -- the debate has begun shifting from tonnage to quality and whether TV's latest infatuation benefits the gay community or simply exploits it. Gay men have become TV's foremost fashion accessory, shown to possess fabulous taste and deliver the best catty one-liners at any party -- the contemporary equivalent of Paul Lynde on "The Hollywood Squares."

Three great examples of post-World War I German Expressionist cinema are out today from Kino on Video: "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" ($40), "Warning Shadows" and "Asphalt" (both $30). The two-disc "Dr. Mabuse" is the authorized version of Fritz Lang's 1922 masterwork that was restored in 2000 using two existing camera negatives. It's not only the longest version available -- clocking in at 4 1/2 hours -- it also comes closest to Lang's original vision.

In a rite of spring, the networks are rolling the dice again on 125 series pilots. The odds are long--last year's crop produced no hits After a drought of March reruns, with sweet May sweeps promising prime - time TV harvest by autumn, production folk doth make pilgrimage with pilots to the networks, spinning tales along the way of Recession and Spiraling Star Fees and Dreaded Layoffs and Dense Development Executives and the Ever-Shrinking Production Dollar . . .

Here are the nominations for the 38th annual prime-time Emmy Awards, covering the period of July 1, 1985, through June 30, 1986. COMEDY SERIES "Cheers," NBC. "The Cosby Show," NBC. "Family Ties," NBC. "The Golden Girls," NBC. "Kate & Allie," CBS. DRAMA SERIES "Cagney & Lacey," CBS. "Hill Street Blues," NBC. "Moonlighting," ABC. "Murder, She Wrote," CBS. "St. Elsewhere," NBC. MINISERIES "Dress Gray," NBC. "The Long Hot Summer," NBC. "Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy," PBS.