‘Situation: Comedy’ puts wannabes to test

To use the sort of shorthand description so beloved of TV development executives, “Situation: Comedy,” which premieres tonight on Bravo, is for sitcoms what “Project Greenlight” is for movies.

The brainchild of actor Sean Hayes (Jack on “Will & Grace”) and business partner Todd Milliner, it is a reality show (subgenus: fantasy-camp competition) whose end will be the production of two 15-minute mini-pilots, the best to be determined by the vote of the viewing public. The winner(s) get a small pot of money -- $25,000, a tenth of what seems to be the standard broadcast network reality-show giveaway -- and a year’s representation by a big-name Hollywood agency (choice of William Morris or CAA). And there’s a chance, we are encouraged to feel, that Bravo parent NBC, which stars here as “the network,” may want to make the winner into a series -- the “next hit sitcom.” But we are also told that this is a business of slim chances.

“Situation: Comedy” is involving in the way these things usually are -- show me a contest and I’ll show you a lot of people who’ll stick around to see who wins -- though (early on, at least) the conflict seems more concocted than reported, phony even by the low standards of the genre. There is an almost comic use of underscoring to convert simple observations (that a “lead character seems a little vanilla,” for example) into pronouncements of doom, and too many reaction shots have clearly been moved to where they will do the most dramatic good. (Contest rules indemnify the producers against, among other things, “the entrant’s claim that he or she has somehow been defamed or portrayed in a false light” -- which is to say, they can do whatever they want.) But this is in any case irrelevant to the central question of whether the sitcoms that this series will produce are any worse or better than what the networks come up with on their own. (“Remember that humor is important,” read the contest rules.)

The series is represented as “an attempt to save the sitcom” (says Hayes), but this is, of course, promotional overstatement. Though the death of situation comedy is a subject of regular mild debate, the idea that it needs to be rescued -- from whom is the great unasked question here -- is just the same dramatic frippery most “Next Great” series employ. The system has broken down, we are to believe, and it’s only by going outside the box, to the untapped, untainted real people of America, that the next great fashion designer, boxing champ, assistant tycoon, etc., will be found. At the same time, the show wants to make the point that the people in power -- the people who are funding and appearing in this series -- know what they’re doing. But even the most senior network executives are wrong most of the time, or else the world would be full of hit shows. (They only need to be right more often than other people who might conceivably inhabit their job.)

That “Situation: Comedy” will affect in any way the future of situation comedy may be nonsense, but it’s certainly true that there are gifted people in the world who have no talent for making connections, just as there are people in the world whose only real gift is to make them.

The competition was skewed toward amateurs -- “professional writers” (as defined by the Writers Guild of America) were excluded -- not merely to even that playing field, but because that’s where the story is: Like Bravo’s “Project Greenlight,” it’s a tale of outsiders who suddenly become insiders -- it’s interesting to see how fast they begin to see themselves as professionals -- and have to learn to play well with others, and possibly to sacrifice their vision to what they are assured is necessary for success.

More than 10,000 entries begged for this privilege. Even accounting for multiple submissions by single writers, that’s an astonishing image -- a nation awash in sitcom scripts. (What’s in your bottom drawer?) Writing the Great American TV Series may have replaced writing the Great American Novel as the Great American Dream -- and it’s probably true that the perks are better. Yet even given that mountain of material, one of the two finalists -- the story of a proper single mother, her teenage daughter and the reprobate sperm donor who stumbles into their lives -- shares exactly the premise of “Misconceptions,” a midseason WB series scheduled for 2006.

I’m not sure what that means, but it’s fair to say the comedy revolution does not begin here.

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‘Situation: Comedy’

Where: Bravo

When: 8-10 tonight

Sean Hayes...self

Todd Milliner...self

Executive producers Sean Hayes, Todd Milliner, Arnold Shapiro and Allison Grodner