MAKEOVER MANIA

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

When the NBC sitcom suddenly Susan debuts along with most other new network series next week, it will be clear that the show's star Brooke Shields has been kept exceedingly busy. During the course of the 22-min. premiere episode, Shields' straitlaced Susan Keane leaves her wealthy fiance at the altar, makes the improbable leap from copy editor to columnist at a hip San Francisco magazine (we know it's hip because editor in chief Judd Nelson has installed a rock-climbing wall behind his desk), gets drunk on Jell-O shots, sings It's Raining Men and further embraces her nascent singlehood with earnestly delivered proclamations like "For the first time in my life, I don't know what's going to happen next!"

Outstanding comedy Suddenly Susan does not seem to be. But no one can fault NBC for lack of valiant effort. Dissatisfied with the original pilot for Susan, which had Shields playing an editor of romance books, NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield abruptly traded in its creator for producers he thought would make the show more Gen X friendly. Changes required an almost complete recasting this summer. "At the end of the day it was good," said Littlefield to USA Today of the first pilot. "But we wanted great."

The show is one of nearly a dozen series--new and returning--to have undergone major eleventh-hour rethinking this season. That's an unusually high number. But with a record 109 prime-time network programs airing this fall--64 of them comedies--and with many of them featuring big-name, stupendously costly talent, the competition for viewers is especially fierce.

The practice of tinkering with shows is not uncommon--tertiary roles are often recast, for example--but this year changes have been far more sweeping. In one of the most talked-about shifts, ABC's drama Murder One, which failed to keep viewers hooked last year despite lavish acclaim, will lose the solemnly didactic lead attorney played by Daniel Benzali. In his stead is younger, rich-of-hair Anthony LaPaglia. Another change: instead of following a single trial over the course of the season as it did last year, this time Murder One will track three consecutively.

The Jeff Foxworthy Show, which premiered last season on ABC and is moving to NBC, was rebuilt during six weeks this summer. No longer a fish out of water in the Midwest, the Southern comic will find himself living near Atlanta. This time he gets a new wife and potential for more conflict in the form of a female boss.

Murphy Brown creator Diane English is a very recent hire on Ink, the Ted Danson-Mary Steenburgen vehicle that CBS put on hold a mere three weeks before its scheduled premiere. The show is set to debut Oct. 21, and English is currently doing a round-the-clock rework on a new pilot on Martha's Vineyard. "I thrive on pressure," says English, "but this is probably more pressure than I ever experienced in my career." She hopes to make better use of the couple's chemistry than the original pilot did, and she will replace all six supporting players.

English blames the season's retooling frenzy on the narrow-mindedness of network executives, who she says often feel their job is done once they secure the services of an onscreen superstar for a show. "You have to have a great star," she explains, "but you also need a great concept and really good writers. People were paying more attention to getting stars than other things, and they found out later that no person or group of people can carry a show alone. If you don't deliver with that first episode, audiences won't come back, no matter who the star is." Steve Peterman, a new executive producer on Suddenly Susan, agrees. "If you're writing a play, you get to take it out of town and try it out. You don't have that luxury on television, especially now that there are more than three networks and no more captive audiences. You have less time to find out what your show does best." If Suddenly Susan is any indication, however, doing your best may still not be enough.

--Reported by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

With reporting by Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles