Distinct? Or Extinct?

By JAMES COLLINS

Whether or not a new television show survives is usually a fairly trivial matter, but in the case of Sports Night the stakes are higher. This series, which airs Tuesdays at 9:30 E.T. on ABC, represents the best opportunity in a long time for network comedy to evolve into something sharper and more interesting. If it fails--a highly possible outcome, given its mediocre ratings--then the networks will be all the more wary of trying something novel. On the other hand, if the show succeeds, it just might revitalize a very tired form.

Sports Night is about a nightly cable show of that name, modeled on ESPN's SportsCenter, on which two anchors cover dozens of athletic events while trading jokes back and forth. (Like ABC, ESPN is owned by Disney, and while Sports Night was developed independently of SportsCenter, there are plans to cross-promote them.) Peter Krause and Josh Charles play the anchors Casey and Dan, Felicity Huffman is the producer Dana, and Robert Guillaume is the show's executive producer Isaac. Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter for A Few Good Men and The American President, created Sports Night and is among its executive producers. Like a number of emigre writers from the movies now working in TV, Sorkin brings a fresh approach to the medium, even if his sensibility is mainstream. Another executive producer is Thomas Schlamme, who directed episodes of The Larry Sanders Show and so has some experience with unconventional TV comedies about TV.

In many ways, Sports Night is very conventional--a cable sports show could serve well as a setting for an updated Murphy Brown. But the show is more advanced than that. In the past two decades, sitcoms haven't changed much, whereas TV dramas have become far more sophisticated in both form and content. What the creators of Sports Night have done is take some of the techniques that are familiar in dramas and apply them to a comedy. The result, on account of its richer atmosphere, its rhythm, its more realistic style and its subject matter, is a show that differs from both the standard-issue sitcom and the "dramedies" of the past like The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.

For decades, sitcoms have consisted of a few people standing on a fake-looking set barking jokes at each other. On Sports Night, the camera moves; people move. Like all sitcoms, it is shot before an audience, but with its sets and editing, it manages to stretch the genre's visual limitations. Forgoing the march-time comic pace of the typical sitcom, the show's dialogue includes a mix of throwaway lines, banter, long speeches and TV-techno talk, which provide a particular touch of ER-like authenticity.

As for content, it is of course nothing new for a series to combine comic and serious elements. What makes Sports Night different is the kind of issues it takes up, which are more sinewy than the usual interpersonal mush (although the show has that too). Characters are confronted with challenges to their professional and personal integrity, as when Dana had to decide how the show should handle an interview with a star athlete who had committed an assault on one of its producers. (That episode ran without a laugh track, something the producers have wanted all along but the network agreed to only on this occasion.)

If Sports Night is by far the most interesting new series of the year, and among the most entertaining, it also has some problems. Krause and Charles play the two quick-witted, sports-obsessed pals very plausibly, but so far their characters have been hard to get to know. Huffman is so convincingly over-stressed that she's almost off-putting. The most appealing cast member is Joshua Malina as a brainiac associate producer. But his role sometimes turns sappy, and the show's general earnestness results in speeches that are cliched and moral dilemmas that feel contrived.

Still, Sports Night's freshness is inspiring, and its potential is great. Luckily, Disney chief Michael Eisner is rumored to be among the show's fans. The network has ordered more episodes and acknowledges that it has not promoted the show properly; plans are under way to better convey its tone. "Today a show needs to be distinctive to break out," says Jamie Tarses, president of ABC Entertainment. Here's hoping Sports Night can break out, for if it fails, it could give distinctiveness a bad name, and that's just what TV doesn't need.

--With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles