The Theory of ‘Relativity’ Rests on a Proven Risk

Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz have been down this road before--producing an acclaimed, marginally rated series that puts a microscope over the small and sometimes awkward moments in daily life.

They reinvented the genre in “thirtysomething,” then turned to high school in “My So-Called Life” (nicknamed by some as “fifteensomething”) and now they’re chronicling a twentysomething couple in ABC’s “Relativity.”

Their partnership began with the 1983 NBC movie “Special Bulletin” and has spanned such successful features as “Glory,” “Legends of the Fall” and “Courage Under Fire,” all directed by Zwick. Herskovitz’s credits include “Jack the Bear” and “The Honest Courtesan,” which will be released next year.

All of which begs the question of what brings them back to television--a medium where they’ve been adept at producing shows that enthrall part of the audience but don’t possess widespread appeal. At times their Bedford Falls Co. (named for the town in “It’s a Wonderful Life”) seems to be playing the art-house circuit in a medium that hungers for blockbusters.

The producers admit they feel some frustration with those results, though they also point out that the issue of failure in prime-time television is, well, relative.

“It’s important to understand that what’s frustrating is what ratings do to our survivability on a network,” said Herskovitz, sitting in the company’s home-styled offices. “The poor ratings themselves don’t particularly upset us, because a poor rating on a television show still represents a huge number of people.

“Even in failure we’re reaching 11 [million] or 12 million people. If 12 million people see a movie, that’s a major hit. . . . That’s $70 million. It’s really just the frustration of having to deal with the system we have chosen to be a part of, which is that commercial television needs a mass audience for your show to survive.”

Zwick and Herskovitz also realize their type of show cuts against the grain, since the vast majority of hit TV dramas have historically been detective, cop or medical shows.

“You have to have life-and-death stakes to reach a mass audience in dramatic television. I think that’s probably the rule,” Herskovitz said. “We don’t dwell in that territory, and we accept the consequence of that, which is we’re going to have a different audience.”

“What we’re doing is presumptuous--to say the more personal stakes of the inner landscape of the heart is worthy of an hour’s drama,” added Zwick, demonstrating how the two often seamlessly pick up each other’s sentences. “For many people, that is a disputed assumption. A lot of people say, ‘What are [the characters] so upset about? Why is this worth talking about?’ ”

Some critics have characterized their television work a sort of trilogy, with “Relativity” situated in the years between “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething.”

The latest show stars Kimberly Williams and David Conrad as a young couple who meet in Rome and fall in love. That bond ends her engagement to another man but only begins a tangled web of relationships between their respective families.

The series was created by Jason Katims, a playwright Zwick originally recruited to work on “My So-Called Life.”

“Normally you would go and see a romantic comedy, at the end the couple would kiss and you would leave the theater. As you were leaving you would say, ‘Wait a second. What happens now?’ ” Katims said. “What we wanted to do was to show everything that happens after that--all the nuance and small moments that resonate, the significant moments that happen in all relationships.”

Herskovitz and Zwick acknowledge their brand of storytelling makes certain demands that a TV viewer seeking escapism may be reluctant to undertake.

“Most people--including very sophisticated people, people in my own family--want from television something that will give them a certain feeling,” Herskovitz noted. “This is not to say that they’re not capable of something that’s more demanding, it’s just not what they want, and I can’t criticize that. That’s just sort of the way it is. They want to be taken away from their daily life in some way.”

“When you are talking about recognizable lives, lives that in some way approximate those of the people who are watching, then you are treading on thinner ice,” added Zwick. “Many people would prefer not to talk about, let alone live, an examined life, and we presume to talk about it.”

That would seem to support the art-house analogy, though Herskovitz noted that economic differences prevent TV from emulating that approach because niche channels that don’t need a mass audience can’t afford to produce quality dramas.

“You can make a wonderful film for $5 million. There’s a way to do it,” he explained. “In television, each of our episodes costs $1.2 million, give or take. If you start going significantly under that to do an hour of television, in this town it becomes very difficult to do it well. As the world of television fragments and there are so many different venues, most of them can pay nowhere near $1.2 million an hour.”

“Relativity’s” ratings currently fall in a range that gives network executives headaches. Scheduled opposite CBS’ “Walker, Texas Ranger” and NBC’s new drama “Profiler”--with an eye on attracting women who previously watched “Sisters” at 10 p.m. Saturdays--the show has averaged mediocre numbers (about 12% of the available audience) but hasn’t fallen that short of what ABC projected.

ABC Entertainment Chairman Ted Harbert, who agonized over “My So-Called Life” and calls its demise “my biggest regret,” said he is frustrated by ratings for shows like “Relativity,” “Dangerous Minds,” “High Incident” and “Murder One”--programs that the people who watch them seem to truly enjoy, albeit in too-small numbers.

Still, Harbert said ABC is pleased with the shows’ quality and hopes to persevere. “I’d much rather be able to say, ‘I’m proud of my 12-share shows’ than ‘They’re junky, low-brow offerings,’ ” he said.

The network gave “Relativity” a small vote of confidence by ordering four additional episodes, bringing the total to 17, and must decide whether to go beyond that in a few weeks. ABC also might play out those episodes while leaving open the option of renewing the show for next season.

“They’re very aware of the predicament in which they’ve put us,” Zwick said. “The Saturday at 10 time slot was never one in which they had inflated expectations.”

Having met two decades ago as students at American Film Institute, Zwick and Herskovitz didn’t expect to become TV’s masters of angst. They became partners “to legitimize hanging out together as friends,” Zwick said, and improvised from there. With each doing movies, Herskovitz said, they “bemoan the fact that we have so little time to be partners.”

The duo isn’t currently developing any other TV shows, even though it could face another long wait before learning whether “Relativity” will live beyond this season.

“They give their all to their projects,” said executive Gary Newman of 20th Century Fox, Bedford Falls’ partner on the show. “They’re not about building a huge company that produces a lot of things at once.”

Herskovitz has a more pragmatic explanation. “We can only do one at a time,” he said, to which Zwick added wryly, without missing a beat: “And barely that.”

* “Relativity” airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. on ABC (Channel 7).