NBC’s ‘Grand’ Series Gets a Scale-Down : Television: To lessen the ‘confusion factor,’ the quirky comedy will cut two male characters and focus on the culture clash between female leads.

Expect to see NBC’s “Grand” pared down to a less grand scale when the series returns in the fall.

The Carsey-Werner comedy, which wove together the sagas of three families from different social classes last season, plans to ax two male characters and meld the remaining cast into one household in order to simplify the show and make it less confusing to audiences.

Although “Grand”--which aired at 9:30 p.m. Thursdays last spring and returns to that slot in reruns tonight, ranked a respectable 15th among 111 prime-time series in last season’s Nielsen ratings--the show was judged a disappointment because it lost many of the viewers who watched its lead-in, “Cheers.”

Ted Frank, NBC’s vice president of current comedy programs, said that the decision to revamp “Grand” was not prompted solely by audience research, but acknowledged that audience testing “did highlight the confusion factor.

“The show was a little bit inaccessible for viewers because it was such a complicated show, there were so many characters,” Frank said. “It was not so easy to pick up the relationships between the characters with so many settings, and characters which continued from week to week. . . . We did use reprises at the top of the show, but there’s only so much you can explain in 20, 25 seconds.”

Along with writing out the characters of lovesick motorcycle cop Wayne Kasmurski (Andrew Lauer) and yuppie husband Tom Smithson (Michael McKean), “Grand” producers plan to eliminate serialized plot lines, and contain most stories in one episode.

And, instead of spreading the action evenly among multiple characters, most episodes will play up the culture clash between two women characters--struggling Janice Pasetti (portrayed by Pamela Reed) and wealthy Carol Anne Smithson (Bonnie Hunt). Carol Anne will lose husband Tom via a plot twist that co-executive producer Michael Leeson declines to divulge.

Frank said that admiring reviews for Reed aided in the decision to have the show revolve around her character. “Certainly Pamela Reed’s character was the one we felt to be the most appealing, and the one which was already providing the most connective tissue between all the characters,” he said.

In its original form, “Grand” told the story of Harris Weldon (John Randolph), owner of a piano-manufacturing company and wealthy patriarch of the town of Grand, Pa., who shares his home with his ne’er-do-well son Norris (Joel Murray) and their butler, Desmond (John Neville). His niece, Carol Anne, and her husband, Tom, live nearby. Janice, a high-school classmate of Carol Anne’s, has fallen on hard times since being deserted by her husband; she now lives in a trailer with her daughter, Edda (Sara Rue), making her living as a domestic and fending off the advances of Kasmurski. Among her employers are the Weldons and the Smithsons.

In the new version, the two women live in the majestic Weldon home. Tom Smithson and Kasmurski have disappeared. Leeson, who oversees the show with Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner (who also produce the megahits “The Cosby Show” and “Roseanne”), said that although both women will become involved with men for “short and hysterical episodes,” neither will be permanently paired in the near future.

Leeson, who scripted and co-produced the hit black-comedy film “War of the Roses,” said that he liked “Grand” the way it was--but agreed with the network and Carsey-Werner that the show was too complex and “too dense” for TV audiences.

“You forget that people go out and get Cokes and stuff like that during half-hour shows,” he said. “Also, there seemed to be a perception among the viewing public that this was supposed to be a soap opera. . . . The confusion that made something like ‘Twin Peaks’ well-considered (by critics) was just considered confusing. And we were following ‘Cheers,’ which is a pretty traditional comedy.

“I was really happy with it. I thought we did some really funny shows, shows that dealt with issues that you don’t see dealt with on most half-hours,” Leeson continued. “I understand that it takes a certain amount of energy to watch this thing. . . . But in a recent column, (one critic) described the show as ‘fabulously quirky.’ I’d like to keep that element of the show. I don’t want it to turn into a half-hour comedy that’s the same as every other half-hour comedy.”

With the reruns that begin tonight, NBC’s Frank said that the network hopes viewers who missed the show before will sample it now. “We get a fresh start with the reruns this summer--and then I guess we get another fresh start in the fall,” he said.