The New TV Season : Another Shot at Prime Time : With ‘Snoops,’ Reids Say This TV Season They’ll Go for Ratings

Tim Reid calls the one-hour television drama “the last battleground” for blacks in the entertainment industry. Armed with a new mystery series that debuts Sept. 22 on CBS, the actor-producer is heading for the front lines.

In “Snoops,” Reid plays Washington criminology professor Chance Dennis, who, along with his State Department-employed wife, Micki (played by Reid’s real-life wife, Daphne Maxwell Reid), stumbles on a never-ending trail of unsolved murder mysteries. In a manner reminiscent of “Hart to Hart,” the couple solve the cases and ensure that justice always prevails.

While Reid doesn’t expect “Snoops” to get the same sort of critical acclaim as his last venture--the Emmy-winning but short-lived “Frank’s Place” of 1987-88--he says a more important goal is to score high in the Nielsen ratings. He hopes to make “Snoops,” which he co-created with writer-producer Sam Egan, the first one-hour black network drama to be renewed for a second season.

(To date, the longest running hourlong black drama was the 22-episode police show “Get Christy Love,” which starred Teresa Graves and ran on ABC for 10 months in 1974-75. A black drama is considered to be a series that has only black leads, as

opposed to shows such as “Miami Vice” and “I Spy,” which featured both black and white leads.)

“The last frontier in entertainment is the one-hour drama,” said Reid, citing film director Spike Lee, lead actor Eddie Murphy, pop stars Michael Jackson and Prince, and TV comedian Bill Cosby as blacks who are successful in other entertainment areas. “And somebody will do it successfully. If it’s not this show, then sooner or later, it will be done.”

As Reid talks, one gets the sense that he’s not just fighting for the success of his own show. The battle is one that he wants to lead for the future of other minorities as well.

“The more opportunities that people of color get in prime time--the big leagues of TV--the more it improves the situation for everyone. It proves to the networks that blacks can produce quality programing, and makes them consider black producers and black directors. As long as we keep getting up there to bat, one of us is going to knock it out of the park--and at least we’re in the game.”

Reid, who played Venus Flytrap in “WKRP in Cincinnati” and Downtown Brown in “Simon & Simon,” received much acclaim with creator and executive producer Hugh Wilson for “Frank’s Place,” but, after several time-slot changes, the half-hour comedy/drama failed in the ratings and was canceled by CBS last October. Nevertheless, the Reids said, it is because of the critical success of “Frank’s Place” (which also starred Maxwell Reid), and the post-cancellation letter-writing campaigns aimed at getting the show back on the air, that they are returning to the network.

“They canceled the show, but (the network) realized that the viewers wanted to see the two of us back on the air,” Maxwell Reid said.

“I wouldn’t be here in this position as executive producer (of ‘Snoops’) without ‘Frank’s Place,’ ” Reid added during a filming break on the “Snoops” set. “Because of ‘Frank’s Place,’ the network decided the public wanted to see Daphne and I, and so they got us back on. They gave us the opportunity to take another shot, and I just look at it as, ‘What an opportunity!’ ”

CBS Entertainment President Kim LeMasters said in a recent telephone interview that the Reids’ return to the network was “due wholly to how good they are.” While the network had already been well acquainted with Reid’s work, “Frank’s Place” gave Maxwell Reid a chance to show off her talents, LeMasters said.

“The joy of ‘Frank’s Place’ was that we got to see Daphne,” LeMasters continued. “We saw that we’ve got a great husband-and-wife team here. They have a terrific chemistry as a twosome.”

It was because of that chemistry, LeMasters said, that he asked Reid to develop a husband-and-wife detective program along the lines of the 1950s show “Mr. & Mrs North.” He said he requested an hourlong program to avoid comparisons with “Frank’s Place.” “Snoops” was the result.

One of the main differences between “Frank’s Place” and “Snoops,” the Reids said, is that their new show will be targeted explicitly at its 8 p.m. Friday time slot.

“We’ll purposely try to make it light and appealing to a mass audience,” said Reid, noting that the 8 p.m. audience includes everyone from children to grandparents. “It will be for the family, and it will have woman appeal. There will be no dark, foreboding stories, no crack stories, and the bad guys will be criminals that people love to hate--the IRS, greedy politicians, cheating husbands. . . . We’re much lighter than a 9 or 10 p.m. show.”

But despite having two black leads and a crew that is “better than 50%” minorities, his show will not be a “typical black show,” Reid stressed. For one thing, he said, it will have none of the suffering that is usually depicted with blacks on dramatic television shows.

“I’m fed up with the depiction of colored people as depressed and defeated,” he said. “In this industry, they don’t really want to do a black project unless it shows black people suffering. They’re always depressed, defeated and miserable. While unfortunately it is true of many of our number, there are also a great many of us who are competing and surviving.

“TV tends to be from five to 10 years behind reality, and my dream is to bring it up to reality,” Reid continued. “We’ve fought and we’ve won many wars but, in the image of Hollywood, we can’t save ourselves. So I always try to depict a character who has some control over his life, because in almost all situations you can find positives and humanity in it. The statement (in ‘Snoops’) is not in the subject matter, but in how the characters react to the humanity within the show.”

Keeping in line with that humanity, Reid said the real focus of the show will be on the relationship between Chance and Micki Dennis.

“The magic that will really sell the show is our relationship, the way we play off one another,” he said. “We have to try to capture the lightness of our real-life marriage.”

In fact, the Dennis’ relationship, and the way the TV couple talk and joke with each other, is quite similar to their own, the Reids said.

“Daphne’s pretty outspoken and tends to embarrass me in public,” Reid said, flashing a grin at his wife, who had just playfully leaned over to have him wipe some lint off of her rear end. “So I tried to put that into the character of Micki. . . . And I’m a bit more conservative. I’m shy, whereas Daphne will stare into other people’s cars, start conversations on elevators, that kind of thing.”

While Reid stresses that “Snoops” will be a high-quality production, he seems aware that the odds are against the show’s survival and admits that it “certainly doesn’t have anything over” “Frank’s Place” or Lou Gossett’s failed series of last season, “Gideon Oliver.”

“I don’t want to make a statement; I just want to get picked up,” Reid said. “Daphne is only the second female star ever (following Teresa Graves of ‘Get Christy Love’) of a black one-hour show. So if you see that we get picked up for a second season, you’ll hear a yell. It’ll be so loud, it’ll measure an 8.0 on the Richter scale!”