Making a Big ‘Deal’ Out of a Series : Television: Creators of new NBC drama let writers and directors from the movies and stage try their hand.

While you are waiting to sell your next off-Broadway play or direct your next $20-million movie, why not do a little television?

John Sayles (writer) and Stan Rogow (executive producer) of NBC’s “Shannon’s Deal” think they can create a different sort of television by offering screenwriters, playwrights and directors a different sort of deal.

Rather than staffing the series with a regular crew of writers and directors, they hope the midseason drama will continue to attract talent not usually available for series television by offering the opportunity to pop in and write one or a few scripts or direct one or a few episodes between other artistic commitments.

“We are doing a little movie here every week,” Rogow said. “All we ask is that you use our characters. The rest is up for grabs.”

Against the backdrop of a haunting jazz score by Grammy-winner Wynton Marsalis, “Shannon’s Deal” tells the story of a down-and-out Philadelphia attorney, portrayed by Jamey Sheridan.

The offbeat, bittersweet drama, which might best be described as the opposite of “L.A. Law,” was introduced last summer as a two-hour movie pilot, written by Sayles. NBC will repeat that movie Friday at 9 p.m., then launch the hourlong series in its regular time slot Monday at 10 p.m.

Unlike the sleek stables of self-assured lawyers featured in “L.A. Law” and ABC’s newer entry, “Equal Justice,” “Shannon’s Deal” focuses on the rather depressing life of one confused, disillusioned and cash-poor former corporate attorney, a divorced father trying to bounce back from a history of compulsive gambling to find a more rewarding niche in the legal system. Elizabeth Pena also stars as Shannon’s secretary.

Also unlike TV’s other lawyers, Shannon will not play courtroom scenes; one upcoming episode ends with Shannon finally deciding to take a case. “It calls for a little bit more ingeniousness on the part of the writers; how do we solve this problem without going to court?” Sayles said.

“Although the machine is driven by his being a lawyer, I think it was an effort to get him involved in people’s lives,” Sayles added, “which makes a little more sense than just having him drive around in a red Corvette and just sort of butt in.”

Though hardly the typical TV hero, audiences warmed up to Sheridan’s Shannon. The pilot movie won the rare combination of good ratings and good reviews. NBC has already filmed the six episodes that will air this season.

Like the writers he wants to attract, Sayles was taking a break from his feature film career--which includes writing and directing such not-quite-mainstream films as “Eight Men Out,” “Brother From Another Planet” and “Return of the Seacaucus Seven”--when he and Rogow created “Shannon’s Deal.” The pair worked together as writer and producer of the 1984 feature-film flop “Clan of the Cave Bear.”

Knowing from the beginning that “Shannon’s Deal” could become a series, Sayles wrote two more episodes after the pilot, but said other writers could take over from there. Although he has written one other TV film for NBC--”Unnatural Causes,” about the aftereffects of Agent Orange--Sayles does not want to be locked into a series.

“I didn’t want to stay and be responsible. That’s more like being a producer than a writer, and I don’t want to be a ‘producer-writer,’ ” Sayles said in an interview at NBC’s Burbank headquarters, where the show is produced in association with NBC Productions. “But I’ve always thought it would be interesting to invent a character who went further than I took him. Over a period of time, you can do much more character development than you can in a feature.” Sayles will continue as creative consultant on the show.

“It’s a good time to work in network TV in regards to receptivity to something new,” added Sayles. “I wouldn’t have wanted to do this during the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ years . . . (but) I think, partly because of the incursions of cable TV, the networks have had to loosen up, and I think a lot of people who work at the networks have found that very liberating.”

Rogow plans to continue as executive producer. So far, he said, the guest writers and directors have been working for scale wages, more interested in the experience than the money. “I went to some pretty offbeat choices,” he said. “I had to explain to them what TV script structure was. But the network said, ‘Let’s try it.’ ”

So far, guest writers and directors have included Tom Rickman, writer of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”; Joel Oliansky, who directed the feature film “The Competition”; Mark Rosner, writer-director of the award-winning documentary “On Ocean Front Walk,” and John Byrum, co-writer and director of “The Razor’s Edge.”

Rogow said that new writers are finding it easy to pick up where Sayles left off. “The writers found the characters so interesting they were comfortable speaking through those voices, writers who had never done any TV at all,” he said. “They found they had a story they wanted to tell through that voice.

“I don’t know if any of these guys really want to do much of this,” he added. “If it does get (renewed for fall), some of the writers will be people we haven’t heard from much before.”

At first, Rogow and Sayles wanted to base their story on Rogow’s real-life experiences as an attorney in a community medical center in Boston in the 1960s, before he turned to producing. Instead of creating a former hippie lawyer, however, they decided instead to explore the midlife crisis of a lawyer who missed the idealism of the ‘60s because he was consumed by the corporate mentality.

“He was quite clearly on a path that was going to give him the things he thought he wanted, but instead it left him wanting,” Rogow said. “Jack is not a product of the ‘60s; he missed it. One of our writers described the ‘90s as the ‘60s without the drugs. That’s the sensibility Jack is looking for.”

Sayles agreed. “Things come due at some point,” he said. “Certainly during the Reagan years, people were living on borrowed money. We were living on plastic, and that stuff becomes due. A lot of things that were sort of coasting on credit are going to come due in the ‘90s.”

Not that Shannon is going to have an easy time living by his new morality, Sayles hastened to add. “Jack’s clients aren’t all innocent, and not all of them have the same ethics he does,” Sayles said.

“I used to hitchhike, and half the people you pick up want to explain to you how they plan to make their comeback and how they met their downfall. I thought that was an interesting idea for a series,” Sayles added. “And there’s still plenty of room for him to fall. There’s a wagon he can fall off of, he has this gambling problem. It’s as serious as alcoholism, and much more expensive.”