Hey, It’s That Guy From . . . Nah, Don’t Say It

During the final month of “Cheers” nearly two years ago, George Wendt was being encouraged by Paramount, by NBC and by series creators James Burrows, Les Charles and Glen Charles to star in his own TV series. There was talk of spinning off Wendt’s immovable barfly, Norm, or making Wendt an ex-cop who ran a comedy club or the loafing owner of a barbecue restaurant.

“They were real valid and real good ideas, but I just wasn’t emotionally ready to consider them,” said Wendt, who played Norm for 11 seasons--a quarter of his life. “My heart wasn’t in it at the time.”

After doing a variety of plays, TV movies and a feature film, Wendt’s heart for sitcoms has returned. “The George Wendt Show” premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CBS.

Now the question: Can he pull it off? By his own admission, he faces an enormous challenge--made tougher, not easier, by the fact that another “Cheers” alum, Kelsey Grammer, already has succeeded in NBC’s “Frasier.”

“This show is bound to be compared to ‘Cheers,’ and there’s a very low chance that it will hit the mark left by ‘Cheers,’ ” Wendt said in a recent lunch interview at his show trailer in Studio City. “Probably even more specifically, it will be compared to ‘Frasier,’ and that was a home run, too. So the comparisons are almost bound to be disappointing.”

Wendt described his reaction to Grammer’s success as “multilayered.”

“I have a great relationship with Kelsey, and he’s a great guy, so we all (the “Cheers” cast) were thrilled for him,” Wendt said. “The writers are really cool--they’re from ‘Cheers.’ So it’s great to see part of the family just keep on going, holding up the standard. On the other hand, we’re all probably--I certainly am--jealous,” he said good-naturedly.

Part of the struggle for “George Wendt” has been to avoid being too much like “Frasier.” “George Wendt” features two brothers who are auto mechanics and host a radio advice show on fixing cars. “Frasier” features two brothers who are psychiatrists, one of whom hosts a radio advice show on fixing people.

A year ago, Peter Tolan, executive producer of “The Larry Sanders Show” on HBO, bought the TV rights to “Car Talk,” a National Public Radio show featuring real-life Boston brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, known to their fans as Click and Clack.

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About the same time, “Frasier” was towering in the ratings and NBC was itching to get Wendt on the air. Network executives wanted him to bring back Norm, but Wendt declined, encouraged by his management. “I don’t want to be Norm forever. And you know, like I’m not going to be anyway ,” said Wendt, looking and sounding very much like his wise-cracking alter ego.

So Wendt was given the script for “Under the Hood,” as it was called at the time, and the first thing he noticed was the similarities to “Frasier.” At Wendt’s request, the radio show on car repair was changed to a public access TV show, and the location was moved from Boston to Madison, to avoid comparisons to “Cheers.” Suddenly, Wendt and Tolan said, the pilot started looking like “Home Improvement.”

But with time running out last March, “Under the Hood” was cast--with Dan Castellaneta (the voice of Homer Simpson) as the other brother--filmed and assembled in a mere two weeks with the hope of making the fall-season cut at NBC. It didn’t. CBS picked up the spoils, giving Tolan the necessary time to retool the series for Wendt.

“If you are doing a show, as I had originally meant to do, about two guys from Boston with a radio program, that’s one thing,” said Tolan, executive producer of “Under the Hood,” which was changed to “George Wendt” to help CBS market the show. “But when you’re doing a show with George Wendt, that’s a different show.

“It’s the same challenge the writers of something like ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ had. Your main character is primarily reactive and not active. George is the epitome of that. If you think of Norm, here’s a guy who sat on a bar stool for 11 years. That’s not active, in any way. It’s hard to imagine Norm wanting anything--not to say that George is Norm.”

For CBS, the cable access show was changed back to a radio show, although the radio element is only really used in the openings. Wendt was changed from a mechanic to a master diagnostician, because the star didn’t want to crawl around under cars. Finally, Wendt was given a younger brother, played by Pat Finn, who could--as they say in classic television terminology--get Wendt into all kinds of scrapes.

Despite not wanting to remain Norm forever, Wendt is the first to say that his new character will be very familiar: “He’s very Norm-like. He’s just me, basically, trying to say the words truthfully. In other words, he’s just Norm without a beer in his hand. I have to walk around more.”

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Wendt has stretched his acting muscles, though, since “Cheers” went off the air in May, 1993. Within a week, he was Off Broadway in search of his masculinity in “Wild Men!,” and he returned to the stage last year as a coarse freighter hand in David Mamet’s “Lake Boat.” He also plays a scout master in the current Disney feature “Man of the House.”

“If I had to choose one form of work, it would probably be theater. But it’s tough to raise a family on that,” said Wendt, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Bernadette, and their three young children.

When asked if he misses “Cheers,” he relates a recurring dream he has. Wendt is on set with the actors, and he does or says something that makes everyone laugh. And Burrows says, “That’s great, let’s use that. Let’s put that in the show.”

“Then you wake up and there’s no show to put it in,” Wendt said. “You know, I have dreams about (“Cheers”). I mean, that’s missing something.”