What About ‘Bob’? : CBS Sitcom Shows Rare Side of Newhart

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that as he rehearses lines on the set of his new sitcom, Bob Newhart looks and sounds pretty much like Dr. Bob Hartley or Dick Louden, the amiable characters he portrayed in his previous two hit TV series.

A career .300 hitter doesn’t just up and radically change his batting swing for the heck of it, and the executive producers of “Bob” contend that Newhart’s success has been predicated on his transporting his real-life persona onto the TV screen.

“When we first met him, we were having coffee, and I thought, ‘He drinks coffee exactly like Bob Newhart,’ ” said Bill Steinkellner, co-creator and executive producer of the new series with his wife, Cheri Steinkellner, and Phoef Sutton.

“I’ve often been asked what I would really like to play,” Newhart said, chuckling, “and I say I would love to play a tough-talking gunslinger in a Western. But the minute I’d come through the swinging door, the audience would be hysterical. They wouldn’t be terrified of me, and so you have to be realistic. I am who I am and the audience seems to like that.”

But back on the set, mild-mannered Bob Newhart, portraying comic book artist Bob McKay, is screaming at the top of his lungs, manipulating his daughter, crying, jumping rope, climbing out on a window ledge, chasing down a wayward 70-foot Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloon. He’s even doing shtick with a pet cat. Is this the same old Bob?

Yes and no, said Newhart and his producers. None of them was interested in replicating exactly the premises and characteristics of his previous two sitcoms--”The Bob Newhart Show” (1972-1978), in which Newhart played a psychologist, and “Newhart” (1982-1990), in which he starred as a Vermont innkeeper. In both those shows, Newhart was surrounded by a cast of eccentrics, but because of his jobs, he was forced to be polite and tolerant.

In “Bob,” he is on a quest. He has ambitions. He is an artist out to protect his creation--a comic book hero named Mad Dog--and the values in which he believes. For the most part, Newhart’s character navigates a world similarly filled with weirdos, reacting mildly and kindly except when pushed. Then he lets his “repressed emotions” out with a vengeance.

The producers said that this emotional “Bob” is a side of him rarely glimpsed on television, but one that Newhart’s concert and Las Vegas audiences know well. On stage, they said, Newhart sings and does accents and different voices, and they simply have attempted to put more of the whole performer into their series.

“And I think this more emotional Bob represents something that a lot of people out there are feeling,” Cheri Steinkellner said. “The whole climate for the last decade has been to just go along and take things as they come and now people are getting a little bit ticked off and a little more aggressive.”

“Oh sure, this guy is a little more volatile and sure, it’s fun to be petty and petulant and pedantic,” Newhart said. “But I’m not going to change that much. What has worked over the years is that women say, ‘Oh my God, that is exactly what my husband would do,’ and men chuckle and say, ‘Thank God for him because that’s how I would react too,’ and you don’t want to do anything too crazy to ruin that. But you do want the show to be a departure from what you did before because otherwise you’re just showing up.”

Newhart and his producers said they toyed with the idea of totally departing from his previous efforts--considering for a fleeting second even making him a single man out there looking for love. “He could I suppose be a guy in his 60s dating. That would certainly open up an area for a lot of jokes, but it just didn’t seem right,” said Newhart, 63, who has been married to his wife Ginny for 30 years.

The producers, who worked on “Cheers” for seven years before creating Newhart’s show, decided to err on the side of caution, in part because “we had a huge onus on us because no one had ever struck out with Bob,” said Cheri Steinkellner.

The difference, producer Sutton said, is that in the past Newhart simply had to endure the oddballs like Larry, Daryl and Daryl or Mr. Carlson until they left. On “Bob,” he has to deal with the characters because he is emotionally tied to them, either as father or working partner.

The Steinkellners and Sutton, who left “Cheers” at the end of last season after running the show for three years and winning two Emmys for best comedy, also borrowed from their experience there. They even created a cranky Carla-type in chain-smoking artist Iris (Ruth Kobart), and a younger, more demented version of Norm and Cliff in the office’s two upstart cartoonists, Chad and Albie, played by Timothy Fall and Andrew Bilgore, who debate such profound issues as the content of dust.

“What was great about ‘Cheers’ was you could throw a topic into the ring and everyone could have something to say about it,” said Cheri Steinkellner. “There were all different levels of education and sophistication and ages and emotional approaches and we’ve tried to find the same balance here.”

What isn’t the same is the size of the audience. Though “Bob” has been winning its time slot on Fridays at 9:30 p.m., it is mired in the middle of the pack among all prime-time series. Friday night TV audiences are far smaller than on most other nights, and much of the younger “Cheers” audience is out on the town. Newhart and his producers said they would prefer to be moved elsewhere.

In a coming episode, the producers will poke fun at CBS about this very issue. After viewing a promotional poster for Ace Comics’ line of products, the character of Newhart’s boss (John Cygan) complains wildly that--just as “Bob” is stashed away where few can see it--Mad-Dog is hidden away in the corner behind the New Horsemen of the Apocalypse, while other, less worthy comic books like Lady Minerva and Oyster Boy are prominently displayed up front.

“It’s (CBS’) bat and ball and there is not much we can do,” Newhart said. “They are trying to build a night and we have elements in here to appeal to a youthful audience. You can’t ignore that audience. It’s their world now, but it’s tough to make them stay home on TGIF night.”

He admits to having experienced “tremendous anxiety” embarking on a third sitcom after the vast success of his previous two--Newhart also starred in two short-lived variety shows in the 1960s--Newhart said he is nonetheless having a ball. During the year off between “Newhart” and “Bob,” he said he felt like Joe Montana standing on the sidelines with his arm in a sling, itching to get back in the game. He realized then that taping a TV show each Friday before a live audience was even more fun than playing golf day after day, even though the odds of scoring again--only a rarefied few like Lucille Ball and Michael Landon have ever thrived on three separate shows--are against him.

“David Letterman said to me that I had a show in the ‘60s, the ‘70s, the ‘80s and now the ‘90s. I’m not going to try for 2001,” said Newhart, who will be 71 then. “That’s a record someone else can have. But if it’s still fun to show up, and people are still willing to watch me, why not? You’ve got to get up for something.”