Order in the ‘Night Court’ : Writers Turn Producers and Breathe Life Back Into a Dying Series

Stu Kreisman and Chris Cluess, executive producers of NBC’s “Night Court,” knew just what to say when they were asked to rejoin the fading hit to preside over its eighth and “final” season.

“We said, ‘Are you nuts? No way! We don’t want to do that.’ And we said no,” Kreisman recalled.

Then, he said, Warner Bros. Television replied, “Well, if we deposit a huge amount of money in your bank accounts, would you reconsider?”

“Yeah,” Kreisman said, nodding.

“Yeah,” Cluess said, nodding.

The pair, who met as CBS pages in the ‘70s, went to work for “Night Court” creator and then-executive producer Reinhold Weege in 1984 as the show’s first staff writers. They were executive story editors when they left.

“We then decided the show had no future,” Kreisman said. “We made the right career move. We went to ‘The Tortellis.’ ” That show failed.

They were understandably leery of going back to shut down a dying series.

“Night Court” was in trouble. It was losing its audience. The cast members were tired of their characters, and the writers felt they had exhausted about every angle of the show’s comic potential.

The humor was mostly sight gags, and the characters had become too cartoonish--even for “Night Court.” Dan Fielding, the lascivious prosecutor played by John Larroquette, had become a one-note caricature.

“We had a show that we didn’t watch because we didn’t like it that much,” Cluess said. “We had a show that still had a lot of energy, with a wonderful cast, but the show had gotten into a direction that we felt was wrong.

“The second problem was that we were on Fridays at 9 o’clock, where you could do a nude show and no one would know you were there,” he said. “We had color bars for two weeks and we beat ‘Full House.’ ”

First, though, they had to convince the cast that the show was going to change. They took each actor to lunch. They promised new things for the show.

“We lied to them!” Kreisman said.

Cluess and Kreisman then spent six weeks plotting the show’s new direction.

“The direction we decided on was a much more verbal one, with far less sight gags and, to a certain extent, far less silly. We decided to look and explore the characters,” Kreisman said.

And they told the actors that one of the characters was going to die.

As it turned out, Dan’s sidekick, Phil the derelict (played by Will Utay), was the victim, killed by a falling piano at Carnegie Hall.

His life insurance policy left Dan $11.6 million, on the condition that Dan use the money for philanthropy--the Phil Foundation.

“Now we have the ultimate Reagan-era character ... who couldn’t spend a dime on himself,” Cluess said.

With Larroquette interested in his character, Cluess and Kreisman started disrupting the other characters’ lives. Utay returned as Phil’s twin brother, bilking Dan of his millions and precipitating his downfall.

“We took these characters where they’d never gone before--to real life,” Kreisman said. “They responded fantastically. They were excited about coming to the show. They never knew what was going to be in the script the next week.”

About halfway through last season, NBC moved the show back to Wednesday nights.

Cluess and Kreisman made sure that their big episodes happened in November and February sweeps. They “stunted” furiously, bringing in guest stars like Bert Parks, Jack Jones, Mel Torme and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

“It was just a new sensibility. It was having the show grow up, being a lot more verbal, a lot smarter,” Kreisman said. “ ‘Night Court’ had this stigma of being a silly show, but it’s not that silly anymore.”

In time, the audience came back.

When the audience returned, NBC realized that it liked the show because it was “low-maintenance” and still relatively inexpensive to produce.

Once again, their bosses negotiated, i.e., put a huge amount of money in the Kreisman and Cluess bank accounts, and got them to agree to a ninth season instead of a sad finale.

“We were more surprised than anybody,” Cluess said. “We never thought the show would go.

“We’re going to shut the show down again, hopefully this year, and then halfway through the season I’m sure we’re going to hear again, ‘Guys, what about a 10th year?”’

“Night Court” airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.