Comedian Hoping ‘Fire’ Catches On : ONE YEAR AFTER THE RIOTS: THE CITY LOOKS TO THE FUTURE

TV or not TV . . .

THE CANDIDATE: She’s been bouncing around the stand-up circuit for a long time, and then last year she went to a casting session in New York.

Her name is Brett Butler--same moniker as the Dodger outfielder--and, as she tells it, the casting excursion for the half-hour ABC comedy pilot titled “Grace Under Fire” was “a cattle call. There I was with the younger horses with the short skirts, and they picked me.”

Butler, 35, a Southerner with a killer comedy view of rednecks “through the eyes of an escapee now living in New York,” stars in the pilot as a single mother who takes different jobs to support her three children. She’s now waiting for ABC’s decision on a series go-ahead.

I first saw her on David Brenner’s syndicated “Nightlife” series in 1987, and she was devastating in her finely honed, flashing intellectual insights about where she came from. Situation comedy being what it is, there’s no telling whether much of that will get through in network prime time if the series is picked up.

But she couldn’t have a more powerful base; she was chosen from the cattle call by a representative of the Carsey-Werner company, which has produced “The Cosby Show” and “Roseanne.” Carsey-Werner now is producing “Grace Under Fire,” is also putting on a Butler stand-up special for Showtime and seems interested in her future.

“They’d never seen or heard of me,” says Butler. “I really didn’t believe all this until November, when they flew me out to Los Angeles and I met Marcy Carsey and she said, ‘I’m shooting a show in April and I want you to star in it. What are you doing in April?’ And I told her I was trout-fishing with Harrison Ford in Idaho and I’d try to break away.”

Butler’s character in the sitcom “is pretty much based on me--a Southern, edgy woman who’s proletarian and literate simultaneously,” says the performer. “Grace tends to be more cheerful than I am; otherwise no one would watch.”

In the pilot episode, she says, she has a job at one point in an oil refinery in Elgin, Ill., where the show is set: “In real life, I’ve had construction jobs, finished sheet rock, been a laborer and painted some really big roofs. I’ve worked places that don’t involve retail, sales or typing.”

Now married to a New York contract lawyer, Ken Zieger, Butler was born in Montgomery, Ala., grew up mostly in Georgia and also in Texas: “I never set foot outside the South till I was 26 and drove to New York City. I worked with (comedian) Robert Klein in Atlanta, and he took an interest in me in a professorial way. He said, ‘You’re going to be good. Go to New York now. If you stay here, you’ll be too provincial.’ ”

She’s done “The Tonight Show” twice. She did a writing stint on Dolly Parton’s ABC variety series. She’s now been on the stand-up trail for 11 years. And to say she’s no-nonsense is putting it mildly: “A guy in cable TV,” she says, “cracked that ‘we expect Brett to get a machine gun and kill the audience one night.’ ”

But now that she’s turned blond, she says, a funny thing has happened: “I think it defuses me. I’ve gotten more work. I went exceptionally blond, way-the-hell-out-there blond, and I get away with a lot more than I used to even though I’m no less edgy.”

And if the pilot doesn’t sell? “Well,” says Butler, “I’m gainfully employed in a seedy and sophomoric industry called stand-up.”

UPWARDLY MOBILE: Ted Koppel wasn’t kidding when he told ABC stations that he thought “Nightline” could make a move after Johnny Carson’s retirement from NBC’s “Tonight Show” last year. For the first quarter of 1993, “Nightline” tied “Tonight” in the Nielsen competition, with each series averaging a 5.2 rating and 15% of the audience. The “Nightline” ratings were up 18% over 1992.

DREAM ON: So I’m watching the Dodgers on TV and I’m thinking to myself: Wouldn’t it be great if some team bit the bullet and nicknamed itself “The Millionaires”?

HANGING TOUGH: Roseanne gets all the publicity, but did you notice that the amazingly resilient Angela Lansbury finished fifth among all series this season in “Murder, She Wrote,” almost tying fourth-place “Murphy Brown”?

NIGHTWATCH: The late Dizzy Gillespie, former New York Mayor Ed Koch, Deborah Harry and Bill Irwin appear in tonight’s episode of the Fox anthology “Tribeca,” about three college graduates looking for a loft. . . .

And Melanie Mayron, formerly of “thirtysomething,” wrote, directed and stars in next Tuesday’s “Tribeca” outing, playing an architect who’s dissatisfied with her relationship with her boyfriend.

JUDGMENT: Now, let’s see: Susan Dey is leaving “Love & War” and some people think she just wasn’t funny in it. I guess that means she wasn’t as funny as co-star Jay Thomas. You could have fooled me.

I WAKE UP SCREAMING: It’s amazing to think there once was a series called “The Facts of Life” that ran for nine years.

IN THE WINGS: The cable network Black Entertainment Television had a “Screen Scene” report on the CBS comedy pilot “South Central” suggesting, at least the way I interpreted it, that it was a pretty sure thing for the lineup. Maybe they know something because, actually, the network won’t announce its fall schedule for about a month.

HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE: It sounds like the old “Sunset Boulevard” twist as Stella Stevens stars on ABC’s “The Commish” Saturday as a reclusive ex-movie star implicated in the murder of her lover. Title of the episode: “Eastbridge Boulevard.”

BEING THERE: “Don’t say ‘but.’ That little word but is the difference between success and failure.”--Sgt. Ernie Bilko (Phil Silvers) in “The Phil Silvers Show.”

Say good night, Gracie . . .