Are you happy now?

ALL her life, Judy Conklin has been terrified of the threat of a nuclear explosion. The 56-year-old book editor, who lives an hour or so north of New York City, vividly remembers the Cold War scares of her girlhood, hunkered down in air-raid shelters during bomb drills with millions of other Americans. Her upcoming move to Virginia brings a sigh of relief, because it’ll take her away from the Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant a few miles from her current home. She feels sorry for Manhattanites who have to worry about being incinerated by, say, a terrorist detonating a suitcase bomb in Times Square. “I just don’t want to be fried,” she said.

Luckily, Conklin has a new coping mechanism for her fears: “Jericho,” the CBS drama about ... uh ... the threat of nuclear annihilation. Like 11 million or so other regular viewers, Conklin can’t wait to see what happens in a fictional Kansas town cut off from the world after mushroom clouds sprout over big American cities. From the first episode, said Conklin, who watches little else on television besides news, “I was hooked.”

In a remarkable kind of audience catharsis perhaps worthy of in-depth sociological research, “Jericho” is the unlikeliest of the three shows that have emerged as unqualified hits of the current TV season. The CBS show has neither the goofy glamour of ABC’s “Ugly Betty” nor the comic-book appeal of NBC’s “Heroes.”

“Jericho’s” premiere merited mostly tepid reactions, if not downright scorn, from the TV reviewing corps. And, really, how do you sell an entertainment about nuclear disaster amid a bogged-down war in Iraq, the lingering memory of the Sept. 11 attacks and continuing worries over the nuclear aims of North Korea and Iran? But if it’s possible to create an uplifting show about a man-made apocalypse, CBS has seemingly managed to do it.

Depicting a community coming together after the ultimate calamity, “Jericho” is an exercise in post-Sept. 11 wish fulfillment, although the producers still flesh out enough sinister goings-on to satisfy viewers’ thirst for melodrama. Last month, a blogger for the popular website TV Squad offered perhaps the most telling praise: “Right now, this show is better than ‘Lost.’ ”

John Rash, senior vice president at Minneapolis ad firm Campbell-Mithun, said viewers could have rejected “Jericho” “because it was figuratively and literally too close to home.” But, he added, “there’s a fantasy and escapist element to it, even if it’s crystallizing real-life concerns.”

Carol Barbee, the writer-producer who oversees creative efforts on “Jericho,” sees the series as arriving at a key moment, with many Americans confused and frustrated by the government response to Hurricane Katrina in particular. The show gives viewers the opportunity to imagine grave problems being confronted and solved by ordinary citizens.

“With ‘Jericho’ I don’t think you feel doom and gloom,” Barbee said. “I think you feel empowered.” The writers have cultivated a broad cross-section of characters representing diverse economic and political backgrounds. A point has been made to avoid real-life political debates in the writers’ room, Barbee said. “Do we sit there and slam George Bush?” she said. “No, we don’t.”

Yet the real-life inspirations resonate in “Jericho.” Take Mayor Johnston Green (Gerald McRaney), the father of the series’ putative young hero, Jake (Skeet Ulrich). Green could be thought of as a small-town Rudolph Giuliani, a public official trying to make the best of an awful situation. “We all want a mayor like Mayor Green; we want Gerald McRaney to be our dad and tell us what’s right and wrong,” Barbee said. (Or maybe not: The writers recently had the townspeople dump Mayor Green in favor of his longtime rival, the essentially decent but slightly panicky Gray Anderson, played by Michael Gaston).

Similarly, executive producer Stephen Chbosky, who was living in Brooklyn during the Sept. 11 attacks, recalled reports of victims leaving final goodbyes on answering machines for loved ones. Thus in the “Jericho” pilot, teenager Dale Turner (Erik Knudsen) repeatedly listens to the nightmarish voice mail his mother left right at the moment of a bomb impact in Atlanta. “Lots of characters came out of that experience,” Chbosky said, referring to Sept. 11.

Barbee admitted she was annoyed by some of the early negative reviews, but her confidence in “Jericho” didn’t waver. “I knew it would be successful because of the discussions it could create.”

For all its early promise, though, “Jericho’s” prospects beyond the first season are a bit hazy. Producers may find it increasingly difficult as time goes by to keep the town’s residents isolated in credible, non-contrived ways. Although Americans have found nuclear holocaust an intriguing dramatic premise in the past (ABC’s “The Day After” made-for-TV movie was a huge hit in 1983, for example), no one can say for sure how well the concept will age over multiple seasons. As USC professor and pop-culture expert Leo Braudy points out, movies and TV shows having to do with nuclear catastrophe are somewhat limited dramatically by their subject matter. “It’s always about who’s going to survive,” Braudy said.

Like many shows on older-skewing CBS, moreover, “Jericho” hasn’t quite captured the loyalty of the all-important young-adult audience (ages 18 to 49), which for better or worse is what network execs obsess over. The median age of “Jericho” viewers is 51, according to Nielsen Media Research; the comparable figure for “Heroes” is 39. The network has had other recent shows that started off strong and then fizzled, such as “Joan of Arcadia.”

Mindful of all this, CBS is taking steps to keep the “Jericho” audience loyal while trying to reel in new viewers. When journalists at mainstream publications greeted the show coolly, the network aggressively courted bloggers and set up an Internet “wiki” -- or user-edited site -- filled with show lore. “It was clear that traditional media didn’t respond to the show, so we decided to work around the filter of the nation’s press,” said CBS spokesman Chris Ender.

In the riskiest move, executives are borrowing a page from “Lost” and putting “Jericho” on a 10-week hiatus, mainly in a bid to avoid low-rated repeats and build anticipation for the return in February. But it may be difficult to relaunch a serialized show after a long layoff. “They’re nervous,” Barbee said of CBS executives. “They’ve never done it before.”

The network needn’t worry, though, that viewers like the nuclear-phobic Judy Conklin won’t come back. Recently she switched on her TV at 8 on a Wednesday evening, only to remember with chagrin that “Jericho” had been temporarily replaced with the sitcom “The King of Queens.” “I realized what an addict I was,” she said.