For ‘Civil Wars,’ a Period of Adjustment : Television: To offset downbeat aspects of the ABC series, humor and personality have been given new emphasis.

Divorce, even when adorned with Mariel Hemingway, is not a pretty sight.

“This is the woman who kept house and cooked for you for the past 15 years,” Hemingway’s voice pleads over home movies of happy wedding ceremonies that serve as the sardonic opening credits of ABC’s law drama “Civil Wars.”

“This is the woman who destroyed my nervous system, my digestive system and any chance I’ll ever have to get a decent night’s sleep,” a distraught male voice counters.

And so it goes--the disintegration of relationships, the devastation of failed romance, the acrimony over property, the bickering over bank balances, the wreckage and secrets of soiled lives aired in court in front of total strangers.

“The rap on the show was that it was kind of relentlessly downbeat, dark,” said Steven Bochco, whose company produces “Civil Wars” as part of his 10-series, $50-million deal with ABC.

And that carried over to the ratings, which were also decidedly downbeat. Adjustments were made.

“Civil Wars,” which will have its second-season premiere at 10 tonight (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42), didn’t simply toss out the Angst and ugliness like a philandering husband, but by the end of its 13-episode run last spring, it did find a way to balance the vitriol with humor, sweetness, personality and even a beautiful blushing bride.

In the process, it barely managed to survive. Bochco, the man behind “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law” and “Cop Rock” among others, said that just as ABC resorted to some strong-arm tactics to compel him to lighten the show, he had to cajole network executives to keep it from a premature death.

Bochco concedes that the show still must overcome the perception of “Yuck, divorce, who wants to watch that kind of grief?” But he is confident that positive word of mouth from the show’s small but demographically prized audience will persuade doubters to sample it again with fresh eyes. This season, in addition to expanding into other areas of civil law such as a case involving a stripper who sues her boss for sexual harassment, the show will feature the mid-campaign divorce of top-level aides for President Bush and Gov. Bill Clinton and the divorce of a man whose wife claims to be a witch.

The show’s principals contend that the premise itself is infinitely appealing because it enables them to explore the great, universal, timeless themes of conjugal love--what goes right and what goes wrong between two people, what passions are in play, who betrays and who surrenders.

They also believe that it is more appealing now because the characters have been fleshed out. William Finkelstein, who created the series and shares executive producer duties with Bochco, explained that it took some time to give Hemingway’s Sydney and Peter Onorati’s Charlie--the two chief partners in a Manhattan law practice--foibles, feelings and personality quirks because he first wanted them to be seen as competent attorneys.

Once their professional ability was established over the course of the early episodes, it freed the writers to develop them and the three other primary regulars that inhabit the small law office.

“Ultimately, people tune in to see your characters,” Finkelstein said. “This isn’t ‘Meet the Press.’ You don’t watch this to hear some insightful discussion of sexual harassment. So our success is predicated on how our characters are affected by what’s going on around them. I hope that they aren’t just these glacial facades doing their job. They’re flawed, they’re weak, they’re given to all sorts of human frailty and the more the divorce stories resonate or mirror what goes on in their personal life, the more successful we are, whether we’re dealing with really sad stuff or really outrageous stuff.”

For example, the season-ender last spring ended with the romantic wedding of two effervescent office workers, and the primary issue of the episode’s two depressing divorces--the horrible humiliation that comes when the private secrets of a relationship become public--also turned into the central conflict in the personal lives of the show’s main characters when Sydney’s best friend revealed that she had slept with Charlie, and Sydney subsequently ridiculed her partner about his morals and sexual prowess.

“I always thought that the show was trying emotionally on the audience, and I think that’s good, but now I think we have gone in a direction where you have a more all-around picture of the characters’ lives,” Hemingway said. “And in a way we are lucky because, with a show like this, you do need time to discover who the characters are and where they’re heading. But today in TV, if you’re not out of the blocks with it all figured out, they don’t have any patience and you’re gone. We were given a chance and I think now we’re doing a show each week that has a wonderful panorama of many great colors.”

Finkelstein, whose parents are both New York divorce attorneys and who worked as a lawyer himself for two years before landing a writing job on “L.A. Law” a few years back, believes that viewers will share his particular curiosity about the private lives of the pros who go home scarred by the catastrophes they witness daily. Both Hemingway’s and Onorati’s characters are single and cautious, if not downright paralyzed--in the case of the once-divorced and often-burned Sydney--when it comes to love.

“When you work on all these disintegrating relationships, you do come away with a certain hopelessness,” he said. “Yet there’s something interesting to me about people who preside over those kinds of train wrecks and yet in their personal lives they still have the faith of a gambler. I’m sure that in Bosnia, people are still sleeping together even as the bombs are falling. There’s still a visceral need for that and I want the show to reveal all of those impulses.”

Finkelstein, Onorati and Hemingway are all married with little children, and they each said that the horrifying scenarios portrayed in script after script have forged a new appreciation for what they have at home. The show, in detailing the emotional ravages of divorce, might even be doing the institution of marriage a kind of twisted public service.

“I’m not going to say we’ve saved any marriages, but I have heard comments from people who have been awakened to the reality of divorce,” Onorati said. “That if it’s that brutal, maybe it’s not that necessary, maybe I can find a way to work it out, maybe staying married is better than this.”