‘Wiseguy’ Plot Thickens, but Who’s the Fall Guy Here? : Television: Ken Wahl, CBS, the producer and Wahl’s agent give conflicting stories on the future of the star and the series.

There was enough confusion surrounding the future of Ken Wahl and “Wiseguy” Friday to warrant an investigation by undercover agent Vinnie Terranova.

CBS pulled the hourlong drama from its prime-time schedule last Tuesday with the promise that it would be remodeled and returned to the air next winter at mid-season. The network said that Wahl, who has starred as Terranova since the series debuted in 1987, would depart after appearing in the first two to four episodes to help segue to a new federal agent played by Steven Bauer.

Not true, Wahl told The Times on Thursday night through what sounded like gritted teeth: “The information was incorrect.” He said he was dropped against his will.

But his agent, Bill Block of the InterTalent Agency, had told The Times only moments earlier that Wahl and executive producer Stephen J. Cannell, the series’ co-creator, were “working things out creatively.”

That drew a laugh from Wahl, calling via modular phone from Mexico City, where he is making a feature film, “The Taking of Beverly Hills.” “Well, that’s news to me,” he said. “I don’t think so. They don’t want me back on the show and that’s fair enough. Cannell’s the boss. It’s his name on the building; he can do what he wants.

“But I don’t feel obligated to introduce another character.”

Cannell, one of TV’s most prolific and successful writer-producers, is headquartered in his Cannell Building on Hollywood Boulevard and has built a studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, where “Wiseguy” episodes were shot along with two other Cannell series, “21 Jump Street” and “Booker,” both canceled this week by the Fox network.

Cannell said Friday that he was “surprised at Ken’s response. . . . I have letters from him and his attorneys asking that Ken be relieved.” He described himself as a “Ken Wahl fan” and said that “I still want him to do the show.” A CBS spokesman said the network “won’t be commenting on the situation.”

It was not a surprise that “Wiseguy” was put on what Hollywood calls “hiatus,” since it was usually short on ratings although high in critical regard for its bold and quirky plots.

Sources said that the show’s entire writing and producing staff has moved on to other jobs and that new hiring is proceeding, with the key creative post being filled by Peter Lance, who previously has written for “Miami Vice” and “Crime Story.”

Some reporters were alerted to the controversy surrounding Wahl’s departure Thursday by fax memoes from Dorothy Swanson, president of Viewers for Quality Television, a Virginia-based advocacy group that claims 3,500 members. She quoted Wahl as saying that the show is “near and dear to me” but that he “wasn’t wanted anymore.” He said he would not be doing further episodes because the only reason for them was to introduce a new character.

Then later Thursday she sent another fax asking that the first one be ignored because Cannell had made it “clear that VQT was not given all the facts by Mr. Wahl.”

Swanson told The Times that she had gotten caught between warring factions. She said that she had received a call from Wahl Wednesday night, wrote the first fax and then received from Cannell “a document”--she wouldn’t say what it was--that proved to her that she hadn’t had all the facts.

Wahl said the trouble began last season, about mid-production, when he was injured and “they (the producers) thought that I was trying to get out of the show. They didn’t believe the doctors and they didn’t believe me about being hurt. . . . And this was an old injury from the previous season when I got run over by a camera dolly twice and tore up my Achilles tendon and all my ligaments in my right ankle.”

At that point, another actor was brought in as another agent of the Organized Crime Bureau for a sequence of shows.

“I wanted to do two days work per episode,” Wahl said. “But instead of that, they went crazy and got all their lawyers on me and said they were going to sue me and this and that.

“As a defense mechanism, I wrote them in my own handwriting a letter that said, ‘Look, I’ll finish out the season but I want to get out’--only to get their lawyers off my back, because I had no intention on leaving the show.”

The actor said that he later talked with Cannell “and he told me in his own words that he didn’t like the show for the last two seasons . . . and he was going to take it over and do what he wants with it. And he doesn’t want to fight with me. He thought that he’d get into creative arguments with me. So he said, ‘Why don’t we shake hands and leave it go at that?’ I said, ‘Fine, I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.’ ”

Wahl said that he received a letter from Cannell’s business affairs department saying the company wanted him for two to four episodes for next season, and “I completely disregarded it. . . . As far as I was concerned with my conversation with Cannell, we had gone our separate ways.”