A Witty Look at Network-ing

The 1976 release of Paddy Chayefsky’s prophetic “Network” was met with wounded yelps from television executives indignant about the bite he took from their hides in his blistering satire of their industry.

Many were as publicly critical of the movie as it was of them. And no less than Herself, Barbara Walters, worried aloud that the public would infer from “Network” that television news was “show business.” The very idea!

Yet what a difference a new day makes, one where self-devouring has become almost a rite of passage in the cannibalistic universe of media. Shades of Chayefsky’s bonkers anchorman Howard Beale--for example, it turns out that pay cable’s Showtime, too, is mad as hell, and isn’t going to take it anymore.

Well . . . a little bit mad, anyway.

Its enjoyably witty new series about TV, “Beggars and Choosers,” is not as angry as the Sidney Lumet-directed “Network,” which remains unchallenged atop this tower of satire. Nor is it as dark as Robert Altman’s bull’s-eye lampoon of Hollywood in “The Player,” nor as edgy as the pilot for “Action,” Fox’s coming fall comedy series about a snarly young producer drawing blood with other carnivores in the movie industry.

Nor does Rob Malone (Brian Kerwin), programming president for the deep-in-doo doo LGT network in “Beggars and Choosers,” have much to say about his business beyond familiar cliches: “We’ve created this monster called television, and nobody knows how to control it anymore.” Well, duh!

Much testier in “Beggars and Choosers” is Kendall Gifford (Stuart Margolin), maverick creator of “Mountainmen,” a new LGT series whose shockingly high ratings are belied by its hot-button rejection of everything TV and its commercialism stand for. Having spurned mainstream America for the wooded peaks of the outback, his mountainmen make bonfires out of money and consumer products, and on their hit list as well are McDonald’s and ATM machines.

As Gifford, a disciple of Emerson, Thoreau--and it seems Howard Beale--lectures in Saturday’s double-length 90-minute premiere: “We’ve become a nation of sheep, grazing in front of the TV set, chewing our cud, following directions. ‘Buy this, buy that.’ And we fill our minds and our houses with junk.”

It’s less speeches than characters’ actions, however, that define TV in this story’s palm-treed neighborhood of back-stabbing and Lunching for Dollars, where who eats with whom is as closely heeded as the audio-recorded overnight TV ratings that inhabitants awaken to every morning.

Although “Beggars and Choosers” is written by Peter Lefcourt, its nose for the inside comes largely from the late Brandon Tartikoff, who co-created the series with him and directed NBC’s entertainment division from 1980 to 1991.

“You know what we said about Freddie when he was running NBC,” Lefcourt has Rob comment at one point. “That he would put a dog in ‘Hamlet.’ ” The “Freddie” is Fred Silverman, the taste-challenged super programmer who was Tartikoff’s boss during his CEO years at NBC.

Tartikoff’s widow, Lilly, is an executive producer here along with Lefcourt, Scott Siegler and Kim Fleary. So it’s no surprise that Rob is a sympathetic figure unwillingly adrift in the “madness incarnate” described by Chayefsky, and a Yalie whose dreams of creating important TV are dashed by the need to constantly control damage and put out fires. Just as Tartikoff was reputedly a decent man who flourished in an indecent racket, the 42-year-old Rob and his wife, Cecile (Isabella Hofmann), are clearly nicer than the business that sustains them royally. But also tenuously in the premiere directed by Michael Ritchie.

After just three months of guiding last-place LGT, Rob is already clinging to his job by his manicure as the new TV season gets underway. He desperately needs a hit, and the one he gets, “Mountainmen,” irks as many viewers as it attracts. That includes African Americans asking why it includes no mountainblackmen, and ardent feminists who wonder why there are no mountainwomen.

Meanwhile, Rob’s 21-year-old daughter, Audrey (Keegan Connor Tracy), is setting up house with LGT’s biggest star, pain-in-the-butt Parker Meridian (Paul Provenza), who is demanding an astronomical new contract. “Sleeping with the enemy,” Rob calls Audrey’s affair.

The star of another series utters involuntary obscenities during filming because of her Tourette’s syndrome. Trampy actress Sandra Cassandra (Samantha Ferris) and her Gloria Allredesque lawyer have brought a bogus sexual harassment suit against LGT’s talent vice president, Malcolm Laffley (Tuc Watkins). And a taste for hookers bearing handcuffs is about to backfire on E.L. Luddin (Bill Morey), the 76-year-old paraplegic who owns LGT.

Looming as Rob’s biggest challenge, though, is the network’s ruthless development chief, Lori Volpone (Charlotte Ross), who tenaciously plots to get his job while sharing insider dope and kinky phone sex with super agent Brad Advail (William McNamara).

Volpone is every bit as manic, driven and exploitative as Faye Dunaway’s UBS programmer Diana Christianson in “Network,” but even more Machiavellian, scheming in a future episode to eliminate Rob by implicating him in a possible murder. “It’s a dog-eat-dog business,” she coos sweetly to a police detective. “You’d be surprised what people would do to get ahead.”

Although this reads a bit like that trashy old ABC miniseries “Hollywood Wives,” it’s much smarter and its commentary more serious, even when packaged in parody.

Echoing urban Commie terrorists and their lawyers arguing with the UBS over ancillary rights and syndication money for their show in “Network,” a former Russian mobster plays hardball with Volpone in a coming episode of the Showtime series, demanding “profit participation” and “15% of gross European pre-sales up front” for a six-hour miniseries on his life. “Can we get real here?” he asks in broken English.

The cast is generally very good. And rather than being overtly presidential or a slick stereotype in $1,200 suits, Kerwin’s understated Rob is especially real. He and Cecile have some appealing tender moments together in coming episodes. As does a closeted gay TV executive with his housemate, even though it strains belief that he could hide his homosexuality from the paparazzi.

Although “Beggars and Choosers” doesn’t approach the twisted brilliance of the late, very great “The Larry Sanders Show” on HBO, it does chip a few slivers from that TV-biz block by getting celebrities to mock themselves. Former O.J. Simpson house guest Kato Kaelin shows up disparagingly in the premiere as Rob’s script-hawking pool man, and Bea Arthur surfaces as herself twice in initial episodes, the second time when making a movie pitch during a lunch Rob hoped to avoid. “ ‘The Ethel Merman Story: From the Bronx to Broadway,’ ” she proposes. “I bet you didn’t know I could sing.”

How authentic is “Beggars and Choosers”? The actual TV industry is surely even more competitive and cutthroat. In one area, though, the story’s realism is beyond question, with LGT’s top management being as monolithic as its mountainmen. No blacks.