Stimuli of Experiment

Centuries shuttled back and forth last week on NBC. Italian truck drivers be came Roman legionnaires; butchers were metamorphosed Into gladiators (one burly swordsman was nearly reduced to tears When he got a scratched ear); a woman switched from modern bourgeois matron to sadistic Messalina. These time-machine gambols took place on Fellini: A Director's Notebook, one program in the NBC series called "Experiment in Television" that had managed to escape from the usual Sunday-afternoon intellectual ghetto to prime time.

Idea Gambler. Notebook got out of the ghetto because (briefly) it had a sponsor, Burlington Industries. When the Burlington people saw a preview of Notebook, complete with Bacchic frenzies and the ghostly prowl of transvestites in the night-shrouded Colosseum, they dropped the option even though it was too late for NBC to change the schedule. Notebook's love affair with Imperial Rome resulted from the fact that Director Federico Fellini made it while at work on a movie based on the bawdy remnants of Petronius' Satyricon. His declared intention in making the TV film was to portray "an exalted picturesque, neurotic world," and he hoped to "activate a series of stimuli and responses." He succeeded, and not only with Burlington Industries.

As a director Fellini has always played with ideas and people and, like most gamblers, he wins a few, loses a few. The loser among the Notebook sketches was a stagy, tasteless mock interview with Marcello Mastroianni. Among the winners was a night ride on the Roman subway, which may still be under construction in the 21st century -- archaeologists hold up the work each time the tunnel runs into ancient finds. As Fellini's train sped through the tunnel, the stations gradually filled up with Roman slaves, Senators, and soldiers.

In last week's regular Sunday slot "Experiment" also scored high with Pinter People, a show in which Playwright Harold Pinter talked engagingly about his work. Critics have combed Pinter's plays in search of symbols and hidden meanings. Pinter thinks they are wasting their time. "I don't sermonize," he said. "There's nothing I have to say at all, except what I discover about the characters. I don't know any more about people than anybody else does--I just know about the characters I write about."

Pinter also eavesdrops. His "Experiment" sketches, shown in animation, were ideal eavesdropping situations: a foreman reporting to his jovial boss; a bus queue enlivened by a quarrel; an earnest job applicant getting the works. Thus summarized the sketches sound unexciting, but they completely engaged the viewers' attention, and were beautifully interspersed with filmed shots of London and Londoners--old ladies gossiping, Thames bargemen clowning when the camera was on them, swinging birds in a discotheque.

As originally conceived, "Experiment" was to present nine original dramas each season. Tom McAvity, 61, general program executive of the series, soon discovered it was not possible to round up that many good plays, so nondramatic fare was added. He and his team work within the confines of a low budget, some $400,000 a season, or less than what each network spends for one night's programming. He must also be careful not to infringe on the jealous domain of NBC News.

Within these limits, McAvity has done an extraordinary job. Of the 23 shows performed during the past three seasons, not one has been a total clinker, and most were impressive. The shows included Four Days to Omaha, in which the posthumous son of an American soldier tries to piece together his father's last days before death in Normandy; Color Me German, an examination of a Mischling, or the child of a black G.I. and a German girl; Passport to Prague, a moving love story about an American girl and a Czech designer.

For budget reasons, many "Experiment" shows are filmed abroad; all of them are fully controlled by the individual producers or directors. McAvity does not deliberately seek out name actors or authors. "A name wouldn't add a nickel to our rating," he says. Estimates of the TV audience run from 10 to 15 million, compared with 50 million for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. McAvity says, "A good bowling match will kick hell out of us." The series has developed an odd byproduct: many advertising agencies have asked for screenings of some of the shows. What they wanted to see was not their content, but their technique--to decide if they were applicable to TV commercials.

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