Will ‘Grapevine’ Bear Fruit This Time?

“Grapevine,” an ensemble comedy set in Miami Beach, where young, single people alternately date, fall in and out of love and talk to the camera about it all, begins its second life on CBS tonight, eight years after it entered an unusual state of limbo.

Produced in the early days of the network’s in-house studio, CBS Productions, “Grapevine” originally debuted in the summer of 1992, aired for six episodes and promptly disappeared. It generated some buzz at the time, but a show about the sexual shenanigans of 20-somethings on South Beach that had the pace of a music video and characters breaking the so-called “fourth wall” was a longshot in general, and particularly on a network whose core audience favored the likes of “Murder, She Wrote.”

For most failed sitcoms, the story would end there. But “Grapevine” remained on life support--a project CBS, which owned the rights to the show, wouldn’t produce for itself or anybody else, on the off chance it would become a hit for a rival network. Instead, “Grapevine” sat on the back burner of development through three successive CBS regimes, never alive but never quite dead, either.

For David Frankel, “Grapevine’s” creator and executive producer, this was just the status quo stuff of the television business. Frankel, in fact, would go on to make more odd TV history in 1997, after “Dear Diary,” a pilot he created for ABC, went from being a failed pilot to an Academy Award-winning short film.

Frankel concedes today that he was “too naive and arrogant” to make “Grapevine” more palatable to skeptical CBS executives, some of whom balked at the show’s sexuality and wondered if it wouldn’t work better as an hourlong drama. In the ensuing years, Frankel’s agent, Nancy Josephson of International Creative Management, continued to lobby CBS to take another chance on the show or produce it for other interested parties. But CBS had gone down that road before, only to feel a little burned; in 1994, CBS Productions developed “Caroline in the City,” passed on the pilot, then watched as the show became part of NBC’s “Must See TV” Thursday-night lineup, airing at 9:30 after “Seinfeld.”

With “Grapevine” in the development ether, Frankel moved on. He made a film (1995’s “Miami Rhapsody”), did more TV (“Dear Diary” and the short-lived “Doctor Doctor”) and directed three installments of last year’s HBO miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.” He also watched as those seemingly edgy aspects of “Grapevine” became standardized stylistic points in prime time. Characters addressing the camera? Frank talk about sex? Quick cuts? A single-camera comedy?

“There was this sense eight years ago of, ‘Let’s push the envelope in terms of what we can show,’ ” said Frankel, 40. “I feel about eight years later the envelope has been pushed as far as it can go.”

Playing in a

Different Climate

Six episodes from now, Frankel will know whether history repeats itself. When last we saw “Grapevine,” seven of the Top 10 shows in prime time were comedies. There’s a far more moribund climate for the sitcom today, but Frankel feels the prevailing weariness will work in his show’s favor. “People are clamoring for something different,” he said.

“Grapevine” certainly represents something different for CBS, where the average age of the audience is 53, oldest among the broadcast networks. After debuting tonight at 9:30 as a new midseason entry, “Grapevine” will air Monday nights at 8:30, sandwiched between “King of Queens” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” CBS’ strongest--and arguably most sophisticated--comedy.

Still, “Grapevine’s” glitzy locale, Miami Beach, and glossy stars, Kristy Swanson and Steven Eckholdt, are an odd fit between a comedy about a UPS driver in Queens and a sportswriter in suburban Long Island. But Frankel and CBS Entertainment President Leslie Moonves argue that TV viewing can no longer be gauged by “flow,” industry parlance for the thematic cohesion of a prime-time lineup.

“Flow doesn’t matter nearly as much as it used to matter, where [shows] had to have similar sensibilities,” said Moonves, who, by all accounts, has badly wanted to get “Grapevine” back on the schedule since taking over the top programming job at CBS in 1995. “Look at ABC,” Moonves said. “They have ‘The Drew Carey Show’ and ‘Spin City’ together. Drew Carey is the consummate blue-collar guy, and Michael J. Fox works in the mayor’s office.”

In “Grapevine,” Swanson plays Susan, a cruise line executive, and Eckholdt is David, her best friend and a Miami restaurateur. Eckholdt, most recently seen on the ABC sitcom “It’s Like, You Know . . .,” was cast in the original “Grapevine,” but back then he played Thumper, David’s good-looking, confirmed bachelor of a brother. Here, Thumper is played by George Eads, while David Sutcliffe is Matt, newly divorced and the manager of a South Beach hotel.

The flashy backdrop gives Frankel a chance to riff on relationships in an attractive setting--not unlike HBO’s critically acclaimed “Sex and the City,” which took home a 1999 Golden Globe Award for best comedy, beating out its broadcast network TV competition.

Frankel says this time around “Grapevine” will focus more on relationships than dates, but it won’t lose the tone and vision he pursued eight years ago--the feeling of “people at the dinner party discussing the one couple that’s not there. That intimate gossip, where everyone has one piece of the story.”