Burnett Delivering a New Punch Line : Television: Comedy veteran hopes to create a new kind of humor in ‘Carol & Company.’ NBC tentatively plans to introduce series in the spring.

A couple of seasons ago, some clever TV industry-watcher coined the term “dramedy” to describe those half-hour, one-camera filmed programs that blended comedy and drama, and dared the audience to figure out which was which without a laugh track to guide the way.

There isn’t a name yet for the new kind of TV comedy that Carol Burnett wants to do.

Burnett and her producers--”Roseanne” creator Matt Williams and former KTTV Channel 11 news anchor Marcia Brandwynne--hope to create a new form of comedy when Burnett returns to television in “Carol & Company,” a half-hour series that NBC tentatively plans to introduce in the spring.

The show, Burnett, Williams and Brandwynne said recently, will follow the sitcom tradition of using a studio audience--but there the similarity ends. Each week’s installment will feature Burnett playing a different character in a different story, with a group of regular players also performing different roles week to week. There also will be occasional guest stars.

“Carol & Company” will differ from Burnett’s 1967-1979 variety series, “The Carol Burnett Show,” by presenting only one story a week rather than a collection of sketches. Each episode will be prefaced by an informal introduction by Burnett.

“We’re coming up with a whole new set of characters, and whole new story, every week--it is a bear,” Burnett acknowledged in a recent conversation at the offices of Matt Williams’ company, Wind Dancer. (The show is a co-production of Wind Dancer, Burnett’s Kalola Productions and Disney Productions Inc.)

“I don’t think it’s ever been tried before,” she said. “There have been anthology series, but they were done on film, and they were not necessarily attempting to be funny every week. We are doing this live, in front of an audience--it’s a risk.”

It’s also proving to be very difficult. Initially, the show didn’t feature a repertory company, but production was shut down after the first four episodes because the producers said they decided they needed one. A source within Disney said the first episodes had serious script and production problems, and performed poorly with test audiences.

In shows taped thus far, Burnett appears as an eccentric who “totally believes that an alien ship is going to pick her up at 11 o’clock,” an aging soap opera star who is about to be fired and a Southern woman devoted to saving her church.

Burnett and Brandwynne called delays and script changes a natural part of developing a new format. They said that the first four episodes will not be scrapped, although they may be scattered throughout the season. “It’s a birthing process--it’s not something that is a smooth road,” Brandwynne said.

“Instead of ‘trouble,’ I’d say we’re in labor,” Burnett said.

Other than the search for a repertory company, Burnett said, the only other major change since the show began taping is her introduction, which went from the type of glamorous beginning appropriate for the big-stage “Carol Burnett Show” to a more informal, intimate greeting befitting the new program, taped at Disney in a 180-seat theater created for the show.

Burnett added that she would rather take these sorts of risks than be locked into the cozy living room of a family situation comedy or try to recapture the style of “The Carol Burnett Show.”

“I’ve done variety, and I didn’t want to do sitcom because I didn’t want to play the same character all the time,” she explained.

Williams, a “Cosby Show” veteran who was fired as executive producer of “Roseanne” during its first season because of conflicts with the star, Roseanne Barr, agreed that he’s had enough of the sitcom for the time being.

“On a sitcom, you begin to ask yourself, ‘Now, what’s a (scene) we can do in the kitchen that we haven’t already done seven times before?’ ” he said. “It would be easier to do a sitcom where Carol plays the wacky cleaning lady who runs this house with two smart aleck kids and crazy neighbors, but I don’t want to do that.”

Although old “Carol Burnett Show” standbys such as Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence and Tim Conway may appear as guests on the new series, viewers should not expect a “Carol Burnett Show” reunion, Burnett said. “It’s a different show, with different people.”

Along with the risk of introducing a new format, Burnett also faces the possibility that audiences will not accept her in something different from “The Carol Burnett Show.” Last season, two other comedy veterans, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, failed in new comedy series.

Burnett said she does not see “Carol & Company” as her “return” to TV.

“I never felt that I went off; I just sort of stopped,’ she said. “I like TV work, and this just sort of appealed to me.

“It’s all a crap shoot. And if it doesn’t succeed, at least we’ll know it didn’t fail because we didn’t try something different.”