‘Private Eye’--Case Closed?

The office coffee table had an ashtray full of Dunhill butts, some battered cartons of Wheat Thins and a semicircle of empty Corona bottles that looked like bowling pins on holiday.

Anthony Yerkovich, the creator and executive producer of “Private Eye,” NBC’s ambitious, expensive and ratings-starved ‘50s detective series (which airs Fridays at 10 p.m.), eyed one of the pink script pages in his lap.

“Now remember, we’ve changed the dialogue in this scene,” he told Larry Shaw, a young director who would begin shooting a new episode the next morning. “Instead of Dottie doing a scene from ‘High Noon,’ we’re going to replace it with something from a ‘50s horror movie. The actors should get the pages later tonight.”

With it already being 10 p.m., who knows what “later tonight” meant? But Yerkovich, who at 36 still has the boyish good looks and enthusiasm of a frat house social director, hadn’t lost his sense of humor.

“Our poor actors,” he said with an impish grin. “We like to wake ‘em up in the middle of the night and (mess) up their REM periods. That way they can’t ever get too comfortable.”

And when was this scene scheduled to shoot?

“Tomorrow,” Yerkovich replied.

“Hey, we’re still looking for a major location where we’re going to shoot 12 different scenes the day after tomorrow. That’s part of our production problem--the way this script is set up, we need to tell three different main stories in a one-hour show.”

Shaw stared wearily at his 60-page script, which would be trimmed down to about 45 pages by the time it was shot. “What we really need,” he said, “is two hours.”

What “Private Eye” really needs is better ratings. The show, which Yerkovich says costs about $1.25 million per episode, has consistently lost its 10 p.m. time slot, running third to CBS’ “Falcon Crest” and ABC’s “20/20.”

The debate within the TV industry has focused on NBC’s scheduling tactic of having “Eye” follow “Miami Vice.” Clearly NBC thought the two shows were a perfect stylistic match, but rival programmers have questioned whether two hours of designer video might be one hour too much.

Will “Private Eye” survive? Warren Littlefield, NBC’s executive vice president of prime-time programs, refused to comment, other than to praise Yerkovich, who spent three years as a writer-producer on “Hill Street Blues” and created “Miami Vice,” two key NBC hits.

Other TV executives, echoing NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff’s recent speculation about TV audiences perhaps being burned out on high-style shows, are convinced the costly show is a flop.

All this brooding should end later this week. NBC is expected to unveil its midseason lineup by Thursday--and it’s a cinch that the network will decide “Private Eye’s” fate before announcing its new schedule.

A month ago, Yerkovich was still optimistic about the show’s future, reminding visitors that “Private Eye’s” ratings were only marginally lower than first-season numbers for “Hill Street,” “Vice” and “Crime Story.” But now he sounds like a man who’s taken a look at the 1988 schedule--and couldn’t find his show’s name on it.

“After meeting with the top guys the other day, my gut feeling is that NBC’s gonna cancel the show. They just don’t think we have the kind of ratings that justify a renewal.”

While Yerkovich has praised NBC’s treatment of the show, he’s repeatedly complained about the network’s time-slot choice. “Over the past few months, I’ve been approached by at least 2,000 people--waitresses, cab drivers and everyone else who’s an expert on network programming and politics--who’ve all told me how terrible our time slot is.

“Friday night is fine for a show like ‘Knots Landing,’ whose audience isn’t going to be out at a rock concert. But our target audience is going to the movies or high school football games. Unless they’re bedridden with the flu, they’re not home watching TV.”

Yerkovich also fought--unsuccessfully--to stop NBC from piggybacking its “Private Eye” promos with “Miami Vice.” “Over my heated objections, they’ve promoted us as if we were joined at the hip with ‘Vice.’ I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses--but it’s frustrating to see your show go down the tubes because of stuff that has nothing to do with the creative process.

“You don’t follow a four-course Sichuan meal with Thai food and you don’t follow ‘Vice’ with ‘Private Eye.’ After an hour of ‘Miami Vice’ with James Brown as an extraterrestrial, most people would have trouble following the narrative flow of a Volvo commercial.”

Stylish and intense, bright and razor-cut handsome, Yerkovich--like “L.A. Law’s” Steven Bochco and “Moonlighting’s” Glenn Caron--is a front-runner in TV’s new generation of Great Bright Hopes.

His credits are strictly hip-TV Ivy League. He had a hand in writing more than 30 “Hill Street Blues” episodes, then locked himself away in a Miami hotel room for two weeks and dreamed up “Miami Vice” (and saw Michael Mann hog all the credit after Yerkovich left).

Now Yerkovich masterminds “Private Eye,” a show he boasts--perhaps a bit apocryphally--that he sold to NBC while he was double-parked in the lot outside.

Yerkovich is an odd mixture of Hollywood scene-maker and push-the-envelope TV crusader. Born in Buffalo and educated at Georgetown, he drives a Jeep Wagoneer (equipped with ski rack and car phone), skis in Aspen and can score a prime table in two minutes at the trendy West Beach Cafe on a Friday night.

He’s crazy about rock bands such as the BoDeans and Chris Isaak, yet is comfortable quoting William Carlos Williams and Nathanael West. His close pal is “Vice” star Don Johnson, yet most TV doesn’t move him--he’d rather see a new film by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.

Is Yerkovich brash? What else would you call a guy who casually acknowledged that one of “Private Eye’s” early episodes--filmed on the Universal lot, within eyeshot of Lew Wasserman’s office--was inspired by an incident in Dan Moldea’s book “Dark Victory: MCA, Ronald Reagan & the Mob.”

Is Yerkovich shooting for the moon? Listen to him describe his show’s vision: “In the ‘50s, L.A. was a quintessential, postwar American city--and we’re trying to show that it was also a city of dreams, all the dreams of success and fame that drove people out West. That’s why our private eye figure, who is often so obsessed with his failures, works so well in that environment. He’s like one of the characters from Nathanael West’s works, where you see that the dream which destroys is the dream which is not fulfilled.”

Even if “Eye” gets canceled, Yerkovich can still boast that it may have been one of the easiest shows to sell to a major network in years. Noting that he had a certain amount of clout with NBC “after ‘Miami Vice’ sold its 2 millionth T-shirt,” Yerkovich couldn’t help but gloat over the brevity of his pitch meeting: “If they’re going to give you a two-hour pilot and half a season’s worth of shows, why bother to let your parking meter go longer than you have to?”

If the ‘50s are the psychic twin of the ‘80s, then it’s tempting to see “Private Eye” as the stylistic double of “Miami Vice.” Michael Mann always loved to boast that pastel colors meant more to “Vice” than its plots (even if he forgot to mention that this notion first surfaced in Yerkovich’s pilot script).

“Private Eye” aims for a similar visual heat, except its sizzle comes from its slinky video noir sheen--each show is drenched in shadows, crammed with neon sculptures and often decorated with sleek hot rods spotlighted in pools of amber light.

Most critics heaped praise on the show. Rolling Stone called the pilot episode a “tour de force,” loaded with “great hairdos, inspirational treachery juxtaposed with top-notch male bonding . . . and the best-looking Tommy guns since ‘The Untouchables.’ ”

Some were less rapturous. The L.A. Weekly’s John Powers blasted Yerkovich’s “torpid, undramatic scripts,” adding that the show’s co-stars appear to have been chosen “for how they look with a cigarette rather than for any heat of their own.”

Still, Yerkovich’s choice of period couldn’t have been more enticing. Set in L.A.’s rain-slicked streets, “Private Eye” captures the collision of two style-crazed pop cultures, merging the last days of the hard-boiled era with the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.

The show focuses on a brooding detective named Jack Cleary, played by Michael Woods, and his leg man Johnny Betts, a frisky young rockabilly fanatic played by newcomer Josh Brolin (James Brolin’s son).

While some critics have complained about “Private Eye’s” self-conscious ‘50s nostalgia, Yerkovich insists he’s reexamining the myths of the detective genre, not just spiffing up its lingo and style. Yerkovich also proudly notes the show’s involvement in such weighty topics as the origins of the civil-rights movement and the dangers of atomic energy.

“A lot of people are attracted to the innocent myths of the ‘50s--the lightweight stuff like Davy Crockett and Hula-Hoops,” he said. “But we’re trying to deconstruct those myths by telling stories which involve the heftier stuff; people forget that the social change of the ‘50s spawned both Joe McCarthy and Martin Luther King.”

Yerkovich gets particularly cerebral when asked about the show’s storytelling technique, which he described one evening as “surrealism with a stable narrative foundation.”

Come again?

“With ‘50s L.A. we have a very metaphorical dreamscape to work with,” he explained. “We’re taking people into unfamiliar terrain, where the improbable springs out of the familiar. Our audience isn’t going to respond to everything, but as long as I don’t insult the intelligence of at least 20% of the audience, we can be proud of what we’ve done.”

At least you can’t accuse Yerkovich of leaning too heavily on tough-guy literature cliches. In his spacious office at Universal, he has a bookshelf lined with novels by the hard-boiled heavyweights--Chandler, Hammett, Ross McDonald and--at last count--19 Mickey Spillane paperbacks.

Asked for his favorite, Yerkovich sheepishly replied: “Actually, I haven’t even opened ‘em up yet. I went out and bought them all--and then I decided maybe it would be a better idea if I didn’t read ‘em.”

A somewhat bewildered visitor to his office held up a copy of the latest “Private Eye” script, wondering where all the missing pages were.

Yerkovich waved his arm in the air. “We originally had a car chase in this scene, but we cut it.” He grinned. “That saved us about $500,000.”

Everything in TV involves compromise, even for a producer who likes to deconstruct myths and quote William Carlos Williams. “You hate the limitations, but sometimes they help,” Yerkovich said as he worked with his director, marking new changes. “It’s like when you were in school and the teacher gave you a 10-page essay and half the kids went home and hung themselves ‘cause they were paralyzed by indecision. But if the teacher gave you a topic--like write about your summer job--it was easy. You could just focus on that.”

Shaw and Yerkovich didn’t always agree on how each scene should play--they simply agreed to share a bit of each other’s vision. After Yerkovich would remind his director how he saw each character reacting to a particular situation, the ball was in Shaw’s court. “Play around with it,” Yerkovich would say, “and see what works for you.”

Sometimes it was hard to tell whether anything would work, because the show’s production schedule was so frantic that the men were debating scenes--just days away from shooting--that still didn’t have a location.

Yerkovich grabbed a handful of crackers. “Ugh!” he said. “These are awful.” He held up the box, which had a sticker saying, “For Institutional Use Only.”

“What’s that mean?” Shaw asked.

“That they get them wholesale from insane asylums,” Yerkovich jokingly answered. “Everybody talks about how much this show costs, but no one ever says how much we’re saving on the crackers.”