THREE’S COMPANY, TWELVE’S A CROWD

As the television season moves through its midway point, viewers checking out four shows premiering next week may get triple vision:

* A new NBC comedy revolves around two young guys and a young woman who are all best friends and live in the same house.

* A new ABC comedy revolves around two young guys and a young woman who are all best friends and live in the same apartment building.

* A new Fox drama features two young guys and a young woman who are all best friends and live in close proximity to one another.

* And ABC has another new comedy with two women and a man in their early 30s who live together in the same house. In this case, the man is married to one woman and is mortal enemies with the other--his sister-in-law.

The triple threats kick off Monday with the debut of “House Rules” on NBC, continue Tuesday with ABC’s “That’s Life” and end up Wednesday with the overlapping premieres of Fox’s “Significant Others” and ABC’s “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place.”

Some of the producers and creators of the “trio” shows are taken aback by the sameness of the premises. “I am never in favor of simultaneous similarities. TV is the same enough as it is without going out of its way to be so,” said Chris Thompson, executive producer of “House Rules.” “It’s disappointing and oddly disturbing.”

But they insisted that viewers will easily be able to distinguish the programs. Said Danny Jacobson, executive producer of “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place”: “It’s never about the concept. It’s about the execution.”

Still, the concepts of the shows collide on several fronts:

With the exception of “That’s Life,” ABC’s blue-collar comedy about a married couple and the tension that erupts when an in-law moves in, the main characters in “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place,” “Significant Others” and “House Rules” are single, in their 20s and looking for true love. The men in “Two Guys” and one of the men in “House Rules” are students. The women in “Two Guys” and in “House Rules” are holding down professional positions (one’s an attorney; the other’s a seller of chemicals).

More important, the two men-one woman friendships in those shows are stabilized by their nonromantic nature. And the strength of the friendships is counterbalanced by the lack of success of love affairs outside the platonic “triangles.”

Along with the upcoming Fox romantic workplace comedy, “Getting Personal,” with its one woman-two man central cast, and “Three,” the WB’s new drama about two male and one female lawbreakers who team together to fight crime, prime time is getting crowded with threesomes.

“There is just something neat about two guys and a girl,” observed Jeff Strauss, one of the executive producers of “Getting Personal,” about two male friends working for a woman whom one of them has dated. That series premieres April 6.

Several of the producers theorized that the new shows are a natural evolution prompted by the desire to put a different spin on domestic couple-oriented shows like “Mad About You” and “Dharma and Greg” and quartet-oriented programs like “The Drew Carey Show” and “Seinfeld.”

“It’s a genre that has not really been heavily mined up to now,” said Thompson of “House Rules.” “Plus it’s so easy having a three-person cast. Normally in ensemble comedies you have about eight characters with everyone trying to be funny. With just three people, it gives me the opportunity to bring in strong outside characters. I can have an episode where I can write a [great] guest part for someone to come in and disturb the status quo.”

Strauss and fellow “Getting Personal” executive producer Jeff Greenstein, who in 1995 produced a comedy for Fox called “Partners,” about a man, his best friend and his fiancee, said the two men-one woman configuration offers more story possibilities through the combination of the buddy comedy and the romantic comedy genres.

“There are just a lot of different places to go for stories: the two guys against the girl, the couple against the friend, competing for the affections of one another,” Greenstein said.

Different inspirations sparked the new programs.

“House Rules,” from Columbia TriStar Television, was an idea of NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield, who wanted a program about platonic mixed-gender best friends from a female point of view.

“Two Guys,” from Twentieth Century Fox Television, came from the minds of Rick Wiener and Kenny Schwartz, who have a female best friend in real life and took their idea for a series based on the relationship to “Mad About You” veteran Jacobson.

“Significant Others,” also from Columbia TriStar, is the latest project from “Party of Five” executive producers Christopher Keyser and Amy Lippman, who wanted to explore the narcissism of younger adults.

“That’s Life,” from Twentieth Century Fox, is from former “Roseanne” producer Eric Gilliland, who found the conflict between married couples and their respective families perfect comic fodder.

Playing around with romantic possibilities or tensions within the three-person core also provides for comic possibilities, even though the platonic essence of the friendship can never be seriously threatened in order for the balance to be maintained.

“These people are like an old married couple,” Thompson said. “They just don’t happen to sleep together. I can touch on a potentially romantic relationship between them, but I know I’m going to kill it.”

In “Significant Others,” the long-standing bond between Campbell (Eion Bailey), Henry (Scott Bairstow) and Nell (Jennifer Garner) is temporarily capsized when Nell sleeps with one of them. That aspect of the relationship quickly falls apart.

Despite the similarities between the four new shows, producers say viewers will not be mixed up. Keyser of “Significant Others” noted that his show is a drama and that it will also focus on two young adults outside the core trio, “which gives us a whole lot of options. We’re not doing ‘Three’s Company.’ ”

Added Gilliland, “These shows are so different in style and content that no one will get confused.”

* “House Rules” premieres Monday at 8:30 p.m. on NBC (Channel 4). “That’s Life” premieres Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. on ABC (Channel 7). “Significant Others” premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Fox (Channel 11). “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place” premieres Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. on ABC (Channel 7).