Doing the Television Shuffle : Producing: PKE runs a program to develop new talent, even while its films get bounced around the prime-time schedule.

The best reviews producers Tom Patchett and Kenneth Kaufman say they ever got were for a television movie that wasn’t shown.

Until now.

If you thought drama was the stuff of TV, then welcome to a slice of the antsy, chancy life of producerhood, where you never know when your next show will get scheduled or when your next project will show up.

Patchett and Kaufman’s “In the Line of Duty: Street War” was one of the victims of the Los Angeles riots, knocked out of its scheduled May 11 Sunday-night spot by NBC because of “concern over social unrest.”

The occasional series of fact-based two-hour movies from Culver City-based Patchett Kaufman Entertainment deals exclusively with stories of law enforcement, most tragically and specifically about officers killed on duty. (Patchett’s association with Kaufman is a departure from a previous life in television as co-creator, with Jay Tarses, of “Alf” and “Buffalo Bill.”) “Street War” is about a slain black officer caught in a housing project drug fight.

National reviewers with their advance deadlines gave “Street War” largely rave notices, just as NBC pulled the show.

“We were really excited when we saw the reviews,” says Kaufman. “Then we got the call from the network. It was too soon after the riots, we were told. The story might be too volatile, even though the story is strongly anti-violence.”

Last week NBC changed its mind. “Street War,” starring Mario Van Peebles, Ray Sharkey and Peter Boyle, was announced for Sunday, Oct. 25. When President Bush said he wanted to debate on four Sunday nights in October, it looked like “Street War” might be moved again.

Then last weekend’s compromise on the presidential debates spared “Street War’s” Oct. 25 date.

If that date holds fast, Patchett and Kaufman will attain a distinction of sorts, a producer’s hat trick--two two-hour movies on successive Sundays. Their “Final Fury: the Betty Broderick Story” with Meredith Baxter, is scheduled for 9 p.m. on CBS the Sunday following “Street War.”

In the three-plus years of their company, Kaufman and Patchett have produced an unusually large number of films, 12 long-form, generally fact-based television movies, plus a couple of short-lived series.

Like many of the independent TV and film producers who dot the Los Angeles landscape, they sport the de rigueur white sports shoes and casual slacks, their offices are bejeweled with glass block walls, oversize photo-realism paintings and the requisite posters, plaques and placards.

What distinguishes them, though, is a self-declared sense of independence to develop their own movies for whatever networks will have them.

Most of their movies are backed with what Kaufman says are “extensive efforts at research and authentication,” from their first, “Howard Beach: Making the Case for Murder,” to next February’s mini-series, “Telling Secrets,” starring Cybill Shepherd and Ken Olin.

They are different in another sense, too. While at times other producers, writers and directors in television have made stabs at theatrical productions, the PKE group has been operating what might be called the oldest, permanent floating showcase in Los Angeles.

PKE Theatre is directed by Dan Lauria, the hard-edged father of TV’s “Wonder Years.” If Lauria were king of Hollywood he would exile studio and network development departments and turn the theaters of Los Angeles and New York into growing fields for film stories.

“I’d love to see every theater supported by a film or television company as a form of development,” he says, “for writers, for actors and for directors. If we don’t invest in theater with film and TV money we will lose theater.”

PKE Theatre is a Hollywood insider’s secret rite. Held on the first Monday of the month, sometimes at the Odyssey, sometimes at the Court, the stage readings have helped develop a network for The New People and The Right People. Lauria at times has enlisted Peter Falk for what turned out to be standing-room-only readings. Christian Slater and Ron Perlman also have read.

The idea behind PKE Theatre is to gather different people--new writers, directors, actors--while warming PKE’s hearth with friendly, connected folks, to make it a place where writers and challenging stories just might show up, for in Hollywood, not every script comes blessed by an agent’s hand.

In almost two years of operations, Lauria has considered almost 2,000 plays for readings. Nine of the readings eventually were staged, three by PKE. Seven of the nine were put on in Los Angeles, two in Chicago and San Francisco.

Lauria himself has optioned two plays. He hopes to stage one next year at Chicago’s dollar-stretched Organic Theater with Falk and Slater, turning over to the theater some of the money he sees coming if the play is made into a movie. One play he staged, “A Bronx Tale” by Chazz Palminteri, is now being shot with Robert De Niro as star, producer and director.

Lauria says new writers aiming for Hollywood don’t qualify for what he calls “The List,” a roster of experienced TV writers whom networks reportedly refer to when considering new productions. Three writers whose works were stage-read by Lauria’s group were hired for long-form projects by PKE and have since moved up to “The List.”

One such writer, Joe Cacaci, saw his play, “Self Defense” read one Monday night, then saw it staged. Eventually, he went on to become co-creator of “Rosie O’Neill” and writer for PKE’s movies on Betty Broderick.

A play that’s had a couple of readings at PKE Theatre may have a future. Carter Lewis’s “Golf With Alan Shepard” will get a radio reading in December for Santa Monica FM station KCRW with actors Walter Matthau, Ed Asner, James Whitmore and John Randolph. PKE hopes to stage the play, too, but more importantly to take it another step. Maybe a theatrical movie.

New territory. . . .