‘Mermaid’ Dives Into Saturday Morning : Television: ‘A Whale of a Tale’ is a rare example of a cartoon with a female star.

“Darling, it’s better, down where it’s wetter . . . under the sea,” sang Sebastian, the calypso-voiced crab, to Ariel, the title character of Disney’s 1989 hit feature, “The Little Mermaid.” But is it better on TV?

Audiences will get a chance to find out Friday night with “A Whale of a Tale,” a prime-time special airing on CBS (8 p.m., Channel 2) that introduces the Saturday morning version of “The Little Mermaid,” which premieres the following day at 7:30 a.m.

“The Little Mermaid” is a rare example of an animated program that centers on a female character. Since the networks began offering a full lineup of Saturday morning cartoons 26 years ago, only a handful have had female stars--”Punky Brewster,” “Little Rosie,” “Jeannie,” “Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch,” “Josie and the Pussycats.”

Girl characters regularly appear on shows that focus on groups of kids, but they’re usually relegated to secondary roles. Saturday morning cartoons have remained a boy’s club because studies have shown that little girls will watch shows about male characters, but little boys won’t watch programs about females.

“Little girls don’t seem to have sexual identity hang-ups about watching males and finding positive role models,” said Judy Price, vice president of children’s television at CBS. “Little boys, on the other hand, are usually reluctant to watch girls and to admit they watch girls. I don’t think it’s a question of right and wrong; it has to do with the differences between boys and girls. Little boys don’t even want to play with little girls for the most part at a young age.”

Jamie Mitchell, producer-director of the “Little Mermaid” series, feels that Ariel’s unique appeal renders questions of gender irrelevant.

“I think it’s good that we’re addressing the girl audience, because they’ve been underrepresented for such a long time,” he said. “You could do shows that wouldn’t appeal to boys, but I don’t think maintaining the boy audience will be a problem. The stories have a natural action-adventure quality, and Sebastian is such a funny character, that we never felt the gender of the audience would be an issue.”

Mitchell said that he was excited when Disney television animation president Gary Krisel first brought up the possibility of adapting “Mermaid.” But the popularity of the feature posed problems. “The Little Mermaid” earned a record-breaking $84 million at the box office domestically and sold more than 9 million videocassettes. In addition, the film won Oscars for best original score and best song (“Under the Sea”). A television series clearly would have a hard act to follow.

“I recognized that we would not be able to animate it as fully as the film, so I decided to put everything I had into the backgrounds, so you wouldn’t just be looking at the animation,” Mitchell said. “I hired Ron Dias, who’s a phenomenal background painter, as art director, and he worked with Ed Ghertner, the layout supervisor on ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ The three of us got together and said, ‘Let’s try to make the series look like an illustrated book, and focus on trying to get the backgrounds to play as much of a character role as the characters themselves.’ ”

Previewed footage of the special looks quite lavish by Saturday morning standards, and the backgrounds are unusually handsome. But no one would mistake the program for the feature: The animation lacks the details and nuances that made Ariel come alive for millions of moviegoers.

The show often sounds better than it looks, as Mitchell was able to hire three of the voice actors from the feature. Jodi Benson repeats her performance as Ariel; Kenneth Mars speaks for her father, King Triton; and Samuel E. Wright reprises his role as the irrepressible Horatio Thelonius Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian. (Edan Gross replaces Jason Marin as the reluctant Flounder.)

The film ended with Ariel being transformed into a human and leaving her aquatic friends behind to marry Prince Eric. Because he wanted to keep the character a mermaid and preserve the underwater setting, Mitchell decided to make the series a sort of prequel.

“I liked the idea of setting the series prior to the film and not getting into a love interest issue,” he explains. “Our version of Ariel is a little younger, and the stories focus more on her relationship with her father and her family and the world. We concentrate on her wonderment at life and her interest in everything around her.”

“Mermaid” also marks the first time that an animated Disney feature has been turned into a television show, although characters from the studio’s theatrical films have appeared on Saturday morning and in syndication.

“I don’t think there’s been a tradition of not adapting the features to television; the opportunity didn’t present itself before now because of limits on the animation process and other factors,” Krisel said. “Ariel is a unique character, with contemporary sensibilities; no strnger girl character has been created in the last 20 years.”

The animators who made the feature version of “The Little Mermaid” don’t share the enthusiasm of Krisel and Mitchell. Noting that television animation is “a very touchy issue at the studio,” a feature animator who spoke to The Times on the condition that he not be identified expressed his dissatisfaction:

“It’s depressing to work so hard, creating characters who act in specific ways, then see them redone in limited animation. I think the TV people should come up with new ideas that work within the limits of television animation the way ‘The Simpsons’ or even ‘Ren & Stimpy’ do, instead of remaking our films. They haven’t shown us anything from the series, and I don’t plan on watching it.”