COLUMN ONE : Euro-TV Tunes In to Hollywood : New commercial networks on the Continent recruit U.S. writers, producers and directors to develop and guide shows. A major goal is to sell the programs in America.

When the blockbuster European television soap opera “Riviera” debuted last week in France, it had a decidedly American feel to it. The setting was on the French Riviera in the lavish digs of a French perfume dynasty. One of the studio sets was a full-size reproduction of a typical cafe in Provence, complete with espresso machines and zinc bar.

But the plot, pacing and dialogue could have been lifted directly from an episode of “Dallas” or “Santa Barbara,” the two long-running U.S. serials with huge European audiences.

That’s because the executive producer and creative director for the show, which opened in Greece and Spain earlier this year, are both Americans.

U.S. consultants were hired and brought to Paris for sets, music, lighting and engineering. An American accountant supervises the show’s budget, down to the last centime. Even the 260-episode soap opera’s bible--the general story outline that guides the teams of scriptwriters for the show--was written by an American, romance novelist Linda Blair. All taping is done first in English, before the show is dubbed into French and other European languages.

Yet most of the actors, directors and studio technicians for “Riviera” are Europeans. “Riviera”--conceived in a Paris advertising agency by three Frenchmen--is widely promoted as Europe’s first home-grown, home-produced soap opera. A potentially huge European industry hangs on the show’s contorted plot of love, lust, infidelity and vengeance on the sun-blessed Cote d’Azur. If the $40-million effort succeeds, more Euro-soaps are expected to follow.

Now that European television is no longer the exclusive domain of the state (France’s industry was privatized in 1985), television networks are turning to U.S. consultants to help them produce programming that will survive in competitive, internal markets and in the giant pan-European television market of the future.

As a result, Paris and other European capitals have been invaded by American television producers, directors, set designers and writers hired by the Europeans to help them shape the new market along time-tested U.S. lines.

“Commercial television is only a few years old in France and other European countries,” explained Jacques Methe, 42, Canadian-born director of Atlantique, a French-owned television production company in Paris that specializes in the international market. “Commercial television in the United States dates to the 1940s. The Americans know how to capture and hold an audience. This business can benefit from tricks invented in Hollywood.”

At Atlantique’s modest Right Bank offices on Boulevard de Sebastopol, for example, young French writers are taught how to structure plots in the American way, which means inserting mini-climaxes before commercial breaks.

There is no association or organization that groups all the U.S. television specialists so they can be counted. But there are perhaps several hundred of them in the major European capitals. They have come in the past three years. The trend is noticeable enough that the French newspaper Figaro recently printed a story entitled: “Paris, Hollywood on the Seine?” featuring interviews with some of the “dozens of Americans who have left Los Angeles for France.”

For some of the Americans, the stay is short-term duty tied to a specific project.

“We are like the Peace Corps,” said Jan Dobris, 40, an American advertising executive and television specialist who is production supervisor for the “Riviera” show. “We are here to teach people how to farm and then go home.”

For others, such as Marla Ginsberg, 35, former Columbia Pictures television senior vice president, and New York-Los Angeles television director Richard Schlesinger, 33, the move is the realization of a dream come true--a chance to live and work in Europe.

“The reason many of us came to Europe,” Schlesinger said in a telephone interview from Rome, “is that we have an affinity for the lifestyle here--the way people work here and what they do with their time away from work. In Europe, it is possible to sit down at dinner with friends and hear conversations in three different languages floating around the table.”

Ginsberg, who was in charge of developing comedy series when she left Columbia Pictures in Los Angeles for Paris 18 months ago, observes: “I came here because I love Europe and because I had no life in L.A.” Now employed as a television producer for Gaumont-Robur, a television division created by two of France’s leading film companies, Ginsberg said she is happy--”in love, married and five months pregnant.”

She does make less money than she did in Los Angeles.

But “they have marriages here,” she said of her life in France. “They have families. They read books that they are not planning to option to a studio. They discuss what is happening in Eastern Europe. They may not know how to make a soap opera, but so what?”

There are several explanations for the wave of U.S. television executives coming to Europe, according to Leonard Rosman, 39, an American lawyer in Paris who has built a busy practice representing French and American studios and networks on co-production projects, including:

* Privatization of the state-dominated television industries in many European countries opened a competitive market between commercial, rival networks that had not existed before in Europe. For the first time, U.S. expertise in program development, line production and television script writing became important assets in the European industry.

* Establishment of quotas limiting the amount of non-European programming in several European countries created a climate conducive to international co-productions, often with U.S. partners. Under the quota system, television programs must be filmed in Europe or meet other criteria, such as featuring European characters or themes before they can qualify as indigenous European products. For example, despite its heavy U.S. flavor and management, “Riviera” qualifies as a French production.

* The prospect of Europe, 1992, the deadline set by the 12-nation European Community for a unified, uniform European market zone, has sparked interest in developing pan-European television businesses. Until now, only the Americans--with programs such as “Dallas,” “Columbo” and local adaptations of game shows such as “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy”--have been able to crack all the countries of Europe with their programming.

* The dream of producing shows in Europe that can be sold and accepted in the biggest market of all, the United States, with its 90 million television households (more than all the countries of Europe combined).

“There is opportunity for Americans here,” said Rosman, “because under the old system of state-controlled television in Europe certain positions did not exist--such as program development. In Europe, program development was only a marginal part of the business. In Hollywood, development really is the business. Now, because of what is happening in Europe, program development has become very important. That’s why, in this first generation of program development in France, you will find a lot of Americans.”

Nina Rosenthal is a former executive producer for miniseries development at ABC television in Century City, with years of experience in the U.S. television industry. After working on the American side in several co-productions with European partners, she saw an opening.

“I thought I could bridge the gap between Europe and the Americans by giving the Europeans more of a sense of control over their investments,” she said in an interview.

She created her own European company, Vendome Productions (“I was looking for a name that could be pronounced by both Americans and French. I knew the Americans would know about Vendome Liquors in Los Angeles and Place Vendome is one of my favorite squares in Paris.”).

After receiving backing from U.S. and French investors, she moved to Paris on April 1. Recently she made her first trip back to the United States as head of a European corporation. “They keep my clothes for me at the Westwood Marquis. When I got to my hotel, I had 33 phone messages waiting. I knew I was back in Los Angeles.”

Rosenthal’s dream, shared by Methe at Atlantique Productions, is to be the first European production company to develop a product that sells in America, as well as Europe. “I want to develop movies and miniseries and other long-term productions for Europe and the United States.”

The dream of bridging the world’s two biggest markets from a European base is shared by practically all the American pioneers in Europe. “We feel as though we are on the cusp of something here. It’s exciting,” Rosenthal said.

Beth Trachtenberg, an energetic, chain-smoking American who serves as executive producer of “Riviera,” thinks her Mediterranean soap opera has a shot. Initial ratings from Greece and Spain are positive. In its first days in France, the half-hour show grabbed an unusually high 13.4 rating with 45% of the market share for the 6 p.m. time slot.

“We wanted to reverse the traditional avenues of distribution, in which the shows are made in the United States,” Trachtenberg said during a break in the rigorous shooting schedule she has set at the Societe Francaise de Production studios just outside Paris. “In ‘Riviera,’ we were looking for the possible international market that, so far, only the United States has.”

Trachtenberg, a native Philadelphian and veteran of several U.S. soaps, said the team of Americans involved in “Riviera” has taken special care not to appear like “colonialists” invading a virgin land. “We have an inherent respect for the way people do things here, even if it is different than in the United States,” she said.

But clashes with the culture-protective European continent were inevitable. And not all the migrant U.S. television workers have been good ambassadors of their craft.

“There are all sorts of Americans who are here because the American market isn’t all that healthy,” Methe said. “So people are jumping ship and looking for opportunities here. Practically every month some guy from L.A. walks into my offices and says he can open all the doors of Hollywood--for a small fee.”

Schlesinger, the multilingual U.S. director who was one of the first to make the transatlantic trip when he came to Paris in 1985, tells the story of the American script writer, accustomed to writing scenes for the back alleys of Los Angeles, who insisted on including Paris chase scenes with fire escapes. Fire escapes, at least as they are known in the United States, do not exist in France.

And, despite its charms, Europe is still not every American’s piece of cake.

“I had to pull teeth to get one L.A. writer to come to France,” Schlesinger said. “And when I finally got him here, he wouldn’t leave his hotel room.”