On View : A&E;’s Private Eye : The Cable Network Scripts a Series That Reflects Era of Old Hollywood

It’s the 1930s, the glamour, golden days of Hollywood. Famed novelists such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Parker are trying their luck at screenwriting. But suppose they run into writers’ block and need to hire a suave, cynical private detective to help them research their plots?

That’s the premise of Arts & Entertainment’s new six-part series “Hollywood Detective,” which premieres Monday. “Hollywood Detective” stars Tony Peck, son of Oscar-winner Gregory Peck, as literary sleuth Berkeley Nunn, who works not strictly by the book but for the book.

A&E; had been eager to do a domestically produced drama (this is basic cable’s first hourlong prime-time dramatic series produced in America).

“All of our drama had been done internationally,” said Brooke Baily Johnson, A&E;’s vice president of programming and production. “We have done dramas with the BBC and other companies in the United Kingdom. You get a lot (of programs), but you don’t necessarily get an American show. We had a lot of different ideas put before us.”

Enter the Ventura Entertainment Group Ltd., which brought “Hollywood Detective” to A&E.; “We have been involved in developing the concept and script and production pretty much from scratch,” said Irwin Mayer, executive producer for Ventura Entertainment. “This was a big challenge because we produced a show which we believe is of network quality and produced it probably for half of what it would cost the networks to do.”

(The series’ creator, Brian Lane, is no longer connected with the series. A&E; won’t give an official reason for his departure. The credits list the creator as Scott Curtis, a pseudonym for Lane.)

The 32-year-old Peck, a graduate of Amherst College and the Juilliard School and husband of model Cheryl Tiegs, admitted the role of Berkeley Nunn is his “first really great shot. I am doing my best to make it work.”

Nunn, Peck said, is a man who wants to write, but has a massive writers’ block. “There’s a dark and troubled past which can’t allow his creative side to come out on the printed page,” Peck said. “My name is known only among writers who are trying their hand at screenwriting.”

Although set in Hollywood, the series is filmed at Ventura’s studio in Orem, Utah. “There’s a tremendous amount of period architecture there that substitutes nicely for Hollywood of the 1920s and ‘30s,” Peck said. “We actually joke that it is the land locked in time because of the towns there . . . you look at them and you feel they could have shot ‘Back to the Future’ there without any changes at all.”

Peck made his film debut as a glorified extra in Roman Polanski’s 1986 flop “Pirates.”

“I had just graduated from Juilliard and I was hot to trot,” Peck said. “I chased down this role.”

He naively expected it to be something more than it was. “I was expecting a role, “ Peck said, laughing. “I was sent the script and I saw it was only six lines. But you know how these things work. You think they are going to expand the part. So I went and stuck it out, but it was a baptism by hellfire. It was not an experience I would care to repeat. But if you could live in Tunisia for six months and get through that experience, you can do anything. I have never complained since.”

Peck didn’t even think about acting until he was 21. An English major and a member of the Glee Club at Amherst, he auditioned on a lark and won a role in a production of the musical “Godspell.” It changed his life.

“On opening night, I was on stage, waiting for the lights to go up and I realized something wild was happening inside my body,” Peck said. “I was hyper aware and the lights went up and the show started. It seemed at the time that colors were brighter and everything was much more alive.”

Peck auditioned for Juilliard and New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse, his father’s alma mater.

“I realized I wasn’t qualified to do anything (after college), but go on to teach English or pursue acting,” he said. “After being on stage, I realized I was not going to be satisfied teaching English for the next 50 years. I got into both schools, but I thought I would give myself a break and go to Juilliard because my dad went to the Neighborhood Playhouse.”

Peck says he’d like to work with his father one day if the right project comes along. His sister, actress Cecilia Peck (“Torn Apart”), guests in the premiere episode of “Hollywood Detective.”

“Though she doesn’t play my sister, she is my inspirational muse in the episode, which is a role not far from my true-life relationship with her. Cecilia is a very special human being and she does have great qualities. It’s always odd when families act together. I always think they should play their real-life relationships, otherwise it can get quite squirrelly. But in this case, it worked out really, really nice.”

“Hollywood Detective” premieres Monday at 7 and 11 p.m. on A&E.;