BERGEN AND SEYMOUR: DEADLY DUO FOR CBS’ COMPETITION

If Jane Seymour and Candice Bergen have anything in common, it’s the love of a grateful network.

All you had to do was watch CBS Broadcast Group President Howard Stringer fussing and bussing with both stars at a recent television press party in Pasadena to see that.

Critics, however, while recognizing Seymour, 43, and Bergen, 47, as two of the network’s three most important female stars (Angela Lansbury being the other), haven’t always been as enthusiastic. At least when it comes to Seymour.

Rarely have so many critics been so quick to dismiss a series so completely embraced by the public as her “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”

So forgive Seymour if she sounded just a little bit more than proud, just a shade dramatic, when she showed up for the star-laden CBS party in Pasadena.

When Dr. Michaela “Mike” Quinn first ventured out into the barren programming patch known as Saturday night in January, 1993, it looked as though she would be laughed off the prime-time landscape.

Critics ridiculed the politically correct posturing of Seymour’s pioneer practitioner raising three orphans (“I’m not a lady; I’m a doctor!”), and dismissed the drama as a ‘90s rehash of “Little House on the Prairie.” But the public saw things differently. Much differently.

Now in its second season, “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” turned out to be a monster hit. Not only did the show crush its competition, improving CBS’ ratings in the 8-9 p.m. time slot by 132 percent, it has been making the network (which produces the program) a small fortune overseas. (“Dr. Quinn” has been sold in 63 countries so far).

Seymour says her belief in the show never wavered. “When I read it, it clicked with me,” says the actress, also known for her romantic roles in glossy, made-for-TV movies and the occasional miniseries. “I identify with people living in the middle of America,” the British-born Seymour says.

“I have a family and I care about what my kids see on TV. I care about what I see on TV, and I love watching things that are about the human condition. To me there is nothing more compelling in book form, film form, drama form--any kind of form -- than dealing with the emotional responses that human beings have to the traumas of life.”

Seymour continues without hardly catching her breath: “The character is the kind of woman that I think a lot of women would really like to be. She’s bright, and she’s vulnerable, and she’s feminine, but she’s strong, and she’s spunky, yet she’s fallible, and you know she’s sexy and romantic. ...”

The joy of parenting hasn’t been quite as smooth for the tenacious TV newswoman on “Murphy Brown,” at least according to its star, who chatted with reporters just a few feet from Seymour.

As everyone who followed the last presidential election knows, former Vice President Dan Quayle made Murphy Brown’s baby the center of his so-called family values debate.

And while Quayle’s comments about single-parent families generated lots of copy and gave the sitcom a ratings boost, Bergen says the baby may have ultimately thrown the show out of whack. In retrospect, says Bergen, “I look upon it very much as a Rod Serling episode in ‘Murphy Brown.’

“I think the strength of ‘Murphy Brown’ has always been the topicality and the bullpen and ‘F.Y.I.,’ ” she says. “It was great to have the year of pregnancy, but then you have the baby. And just like in real life, it’s like, ‘Oh. Now you have to adjust to the baby.’ I think basically people didn’t want to see as much of the baby as they did and wanted us to get back to where our strength was, and I’m thrilled because it’s what I’ve always loved best about the show.”

So say all but goodby to on-screen motherhood for Murphy. With two years left on her contract, though, Bergen would like to get some more Motown--Murphy style--back into the mix.

“I enjoy singing horribly so much,” Bergen says of her notoriously out-of-pitch performances.