A name that opens doors is getting besmirched

“Girls Club” is not just a Fox drama that debuted to weak ratings last Monday -- it is a David E. Kelley drama, which makes the thud with which it landed all the more noteworthy. Those 5.8-million viewers “Girls Club” attracted left the show fifth in its time period, far behind the CBS sitcoms “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Still Standing,” which averaged 19 million viewers, and slightly behind “Everwood,” a new drama on the WB. If those ratings repeat tonight for the second episode of “Girls Club,” Fox could pull the show before the November ratings sweeps begin Thursday.

Even as a flawed drama, “Girls Club” seems curiously like an imitation of Kelley, by Kelley, as opposed to the unadulterated voice of “The Practice,” “Ally McBeal” and “Picket Fences,” his three most acclaimed series. While he can’t be expected to make great TV each time out, this latest effort bemuses even those who have worked with Kelley (who declined to be interviewed for this article).

What is clear is that Fox scheduled the series before the pilot was shot, making “Girls Club” this year’s version of a never-ending story, in which networks invest in marquee names, making all but blind commitments to show creators with great credits. Kelley has a development deal with Twentieth Century Fox Television estimated to be worth more than $100 million, and Fox is desperate for fresh dramas, with the departure of franchises such as “The X-Files” and “Ally McBeal.” Given Kelley’s track record, he would seem a good bet, and in “Girls Club” he delivered what the network ultimately wanted -- something with his name on it.

“Girls Club” is about three attractive associate attorneys swimming with the sharks in a San Francisco law firm. (One of the publicity photos has lead actresses Kathleen Robertson, Chyler Leigh and Gretchen Mol dressed in a kind of Catholic schoolgirl chic, their lips freshly glossed. They look ready to take your deposition.) Based on the first two episodes, Kelley tries to dance between quippy lawyer talk, inflamed ethical speechifying, WB angst and HBO-influenced sex talk. He’s done this well elsewhere, of course, but not here. You could blame the actors, but then, they’re so darn cute -- living together, working together and playing together.

Kelley, it should be noted, has a success ratio that any TV writer-producer would envy, and he is hardly the first lionized auteur to turn out a stinker. That list features the most respected writer-producers in the business, including John Wells of “ER” and “The West Wing” fame (less known for such shows as “Trinity” in 1998 and “Citizen Baines” in 2001), and Steven Bochco, who gave the Boston attorney his first Hollywood break, as Wunderkind writer of “L.A. Law.”

After the revolutionary success of his ‘80s dramas “Hill Street Blues” and “L.A. Law,” Bochco signed a development deal with ABC, worth tens of millions of dollars, to create more shows. He proceeded to make “Cop Rock,” a musical cop show, “Capitol Critters,” an animated sitcom set in the White House, and “Murder One,” which followed a first-degree murder case over the course of a season.

None of those shows stuck, but at least Bochco, who would go on to co-create the freshly gritty drama “NYPD Blue,” was using his deity status to experiment with what was creatively possible in prime time.

Kelley has said that he wanted to do a show about female associates in an old boys network, but there is something retro about it all -- an enlightened male fantasy in which hot lawyers fight for respect (and they’re hot!). Kelley has run afoul of critics for his portrayal of women in the past -- even on “Ally McBeal,” which turned Calista Flockhart into an icon of the newer, younger professional woman, as Kelley explored the zany, if at times juvenile, side of his comedy. “Ally McBeal” won the 1999 Emmy for best comedy; in an unprecedented sweep, “The Practice” won the same year for best drama. At the time, Kelley’s new ABC show, “Snoops,” about sexy detectives, wouldn’t make it past a season, but whatever: Kelley and Fox restructured their relationship, to the tune of boffo bucks.

But it would be misleading simply to chalk this up to a successful producer pressured by a network. Kelley is too competitive to throw something on the air he didn’t believe in, simply to fulfill a deal, according to several sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. At the same time, “when he doesn’t have his heart in something, this is what he ends up with,” said a writer who formerly worked on one of Kelley’s shows after viewing the premiere episode of “Girls Club.”

According to the reputation that precedes him, Kelley is a prolific writer who crafts episodes for multiple on-air series, in long hand, cocooned from the madness of producing network television by a cadre of producer/protectors. When Kelley does farm out scripts, he often ends up rewriting them, say sources, and he has never been much interested in shepherding another writer’s idea. That may change. “He feels that it’s time to start making this transition into becoming a producer,” said manager Marty Adelstein, Kelley’s longtime representative, referring to the volume of scripts Kelley still writes.

These days, Kelley is said to be refocused on “The Practice,” after withdrawing from the show last season, though he has handed over the reins on “Boston Public,” in its third season on Fox, to another writer-producer.

But last spring, Kelley was being Kelley, with three shows on the air. One, “Ally,” required a swan song episode. And Fox, hurting for fresh dramas, wanted him to conjure another series, as he is contractually obliged to do. So Kelley wrote a family drama that -- according to several sources involved -- the network felt was too soft, not salable under the Fox brand. They wanted something glossier, something younger-skewing, for women. Inevitably, the trendy HBO hit “Sex and the City” was invoked.

“People were surprised, and delightedly so, that he was willing to pick up pen and pad and create another show, particularly when this network is in the middle of a rebuilding process,” said Sandy Grushow, who, as chairman of the Fox Television Entertainment Group, oversees both the studio and network side of Fox’s operation. “It’s a bet you’d make any day of the week.”

In July, Kelley met the media at the annual TV critics gathering in Pasadena to promote “Girls Club.” The show, he said, would draw on his own experiences as a young lawyer observing that female associates weren’t afforded the same advantages as men.

“The toughest thing about television, when you create a ... success, you have to be able to do a hundred of them,” Kelley was quoted as saying. “That puts a limit on originality to a certain extent. Because some things that are very bold, very different, will wear out after 10 hours, 15 hours, 20 hours. The original luster will fall off.”

Some weeks after this, Kelley wrote another pilot. It is described, according to someone who has read it, as a show that exposes the bombast of reality and news programs. Maybe the timing of Kelley’s inspiration is coincidental. Either way, Fox will surely need it.