At Play in Prime Time

Andy Richter has no complaints. He’s happily married, the father of a 15-month-old son, and his new TV series, “Andy Richter Controls the Universe,” premieres this week on Fox.

Richter confesses, though, that being happy doesn’t make for good comedy. “A content guy who is well-adjusted is not funny,” he says.

As a result, Richter--the former sidekick on NBC’s “Late Night With Conan O’Brien”--doesn’t have much in common with his reel-life persona.

“I feel that in many of the episodes his prime motivator is envy,” Richter says of his small-screen alter ego. “I am not in possession of much envy. I am pretty happy with what I have, and before I had what I have, I was figuring out how I could go and get what I have rather than sitting and looking at someone else. [The character] is sort of me at about 16.”

The new series casts Richter as an overweight, looking-for-love single bored with life and his job as a technical writer at a heartless corporation that makes everything from fast-food fryers to bombs.

Narrating each episode, Andy keeps trying to create his own universe by imagining certain moments so that they play out the way he would like them to happen. For example, when he greets Wendy (Irene Molloy), the young receptionist he has a crush on, he visualizes himself as Superman, transforming various objects into diamonds for her.

No subject seems to be taboo in this “Universe.” In one episode, Andy learns his boorish boss has cancer; in another, Andy ends up dating a beautiful woman who turns out to be anti-Semitic.

Andy’s friends include Byron (Jonathan Slavin), the company’s oddball new illustrator; Keith (James Patrick Stuart), a handsome guy who breezes through life on his looks; and his supervisor Jessica (Paget Brewster), a longtime friend who he once tried to date.

Though he entered into a deal with Fox for a prime-time series after leaving “Late Night” in 1999, Richter had a difficult time finding the right concept. “I had some ideas of my own I was interested in developing, and through one reason or another--a combination of my prime-time inexperience and also most of my ideas [being] expensive--they really didn’t work out. Part and parcel of my development process was interviewing TV writers and trying to sort of pair up.”

Enter executive producer Victor Fresco, whose credits include ABC’s short-lived “The Trouble With Normal.” “I was a fan of his,” says Fresco. “I had this idea already, and I thought he would be a good match for it. I pitched the idea to Fox and they liked it, and then I went to meet Andy, and he liked it.”

“He came up with what I call ‘the gimmick,’ and I mean that in the most respectful sense--the fantasy sequences and the subject narrative,” says Richter. “He and I in conversation sort of came up with the concept, the workplace and kind of people who would be there. Then he wrote the script. It was a collaborative process, but he did the writing.... I was the back-seat driver.”

Richter says that while he has had a great time working on “Universe,” doing a prime-time series is vastly different than a late-night talk show.

“There is more a kind of grown-up atmosphere,” Richter says. “The ‘Conan’ show was really not that far removed from what I was doing [early in my career] in Chicago, which was getting together five goofy friends, putting on a show and hoping that people would come see it. We were very much left to our own devices, and there was a real kind of ‘Our Gang’ feeling to the show.

“This was [produced] in a big movie studio. We had a lot of fun, but it’s not the same. I don’t think I will have as happy a work atmosphere as I did on the ‘Conan’ show.”

“Andy Richter Controls the Universe” can be seen Tuesdays at 8:30 p.m. on Fox. The network has rated the premiere TV-PG (may be unsuitable for younger children).