Feeling the Highs and Lows of Being ‘Partners’

Perhaps it’s merely an example of refusing to see the glass as anything but half full, or maybe it’s a little white lie to save face and justify the fact that they spend far more time together than they do with their wives. But Jeff Greenstein and Jeff Strauss insist that they are still happy, despite having gone almost overnight from writing one of the hottest shows on TV to one of the coldest.

Last season, the longtime writing partners were the supervising producers of “Friends,” instrumental in crafting the stories that made the sitcom a huge hit. They were even nominated for an Emmy for their Thanksgiving script. This season, they have their very own show, “Partners,” the first they created from scratch--a sitcom based on their own lives as best friends and work mates.

But without the benefit of a cushy, post-”Seinfeld” time slot on NBC and instead burdened with the unenviable task of pioneering a more urbane attitude amid Fox’s lineup of brash sitcoms, soaps and science-fiction shows, they’ve bombed.

“Yeah, it’s a change going from a Top 3 show to something down in the 80s every week,” Strauss said. “Are we frustrated? Sure. Do we have to be philosophical about it? A little bit. But this truly is an entirely different situation. We have this little show on Fox that is really incompatible with everything else they have on and we are opposite two powerhouses in ‘Murphy Brown’ and ‘Monday Night Football.’

“So all we can do realistically is try to replicate the creative success of ‘Friends’ and hope we can get enough attention so we can keep doing a show that we truly love.”

“Getting noticed is tough. Maybe tougher than we thought it would be,” Greenstein added. “But we are tremendously happy creatively with the show, and the network has been nothing but encouraging--and they picked up nine more episodes so we can finish out the season.

“Are we sad, disenchanted people who jumped off the ‘Friends’ boat just as it was going ballistic? I can’t say that. That was a great job and I miss seeing those people every day. But this was a fantastic move for us.”

“Partners”--starring Jon Cryer and Tate Donovan as dearest buddies and architect partners and Maria Pitillo as Donovan’s fiancee--is hardly do-or-die for the real-life brain trust behind it.

Greenstein and Strauss, both in their early 30s and writing partners for the past 10 years, including five on HBO’s acclaimed “Dream On,” signed a four-year deal worth about $12 million last October to create shows for Twentieth Television--despite “Partners’ ” perilous ratings.

*

To be fair, if “Partners” were scheduled on NBC after “Friends,” it could very well rank among TV’s Top 5. Even NBC executives have observed that “Partners” is a comedy that suits their network’s creative style almost perfectly and is antithetical to the saucy attitude Fox has cultivated. That’s by design, as Fox endeavors to broaden the scope of its appeal by adding more sophisticated programs to its soup.

“I think Fox is feeling a little hemmed in by its style, and that makes it rough for them to figure out a way to market and promote a show like ours,” Strauss said. “We are this low-key, smart comedy on a network that is used to shouting. It’s not an assertive, in-your-face comedy that they can easily slide in or promote on ‘Melrose Place’ or ‘Married . . . With Children’ and all these shows they have that automatically jump out at you.”

Bob Greenblatt, Fox’s executive vice president of development, acknowledged that “Partners” is the network’s first salvo in the new effort to offer a more varied lineup and “upgrade the quality of our comedies.”

“It is a different kind of show for our network, and I don’t know if the audience is aware of it yet,” he said. “They have to get used to the show, which is wittier, more intelligent and more realistic than many of our shows of the past. But it’s still a very funny show. It’s not like we’re doing a PBS show on the mechanics of architecture. So to sort of throw in the towel and say, ‘That kind of thing can be a hit elsewhere but it won’t work on this network,’ we’re not ready to do that.”

But even as the network heaps praise on their creative output, Greenstein and Strauss understand that the next two months will determine whether the show is destined to outlive the winter snow. Fox recently flip-flopped the show’s time period with “Ned and Stacey,” so “Partners” will no longer have to face “Murphy Brown.” And ABC’s popular “Monday Night Football” is now done for the season, freeing up millions of potential new viewers for all the networks.

Greenstein and Strauss said that they have planned no drastic changes for the show’s content as it battles for its life. A few guest stars will pop up soon--including Mimi Rogers as the sexy, former baby sitter of Cryer’s character--and they will open the stories a bit to show more of each character’s life away from the other two.

But even if they are done in by the bad ratings, the producers say, failing on “Partners” is more fun than thriving on “Friends.”

For one thing, they get to ruthlessly pillage their own lives for situations, characters and one-liners. For another, this job plays better at school and family reunions, despite the huge viewer disparity, because their names are all over it--”created by” frozen on screen at the start of every episode, the executive producer credit lingering at each show’s end and their colorful “Jeff & Jeff Productions” logo signing off.

“This has ‘Jeff & Jeff’ 30 million times, and whereas maybe four people from my past called me up when I was on ‘Friends,’ lately I’ve heard from just about every person I ever went to high school or college with,” said Greenstein, who met Strauss 15 years ago when they were students at Tufts University in Boston. “I guess if the show goes down in flames, which is a very real possibility. . . .”

“Then we’ll have a couple months in therapy,” Strauss said, “and try it again. Since we seem to have shamelessly plundered our own lives in this show, maybe this whole discussion gives us something to do next: a show about two guys who failed to capitalize on their previous success, who now have kids and real responsibilities and stress, and everyone else sits around grilling them about what the hell went wrong.”

* “Partners” airs Mondays at 9:30 p.m. on Fox (Channel 11).