Costarring New York

“NAKED CITY,” which debuted in 1958, eventually left its mark on the cultural vernacular with its sign-off, “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” But the show’s real novelty was something else -- how it took viewers into the nooks and crannies of New York.

Though much live TV originated here back then, as now -- from morning talk shows to the evening news -- only one other prime-time series was being produced in the city, “The Phil Silvers Show,” which got its laughs from its star’s wisecracking Sgt. Bilko, who presided over the motor pool of Ft. Baxter, Kan.

“Naked City,” in contrast, displayed “extraordinary authenticity in that it is filmed on the streets of New York using genuine backgrounds,” a Los Angeles Times critic wrote at the time.

Four decades later, that’s the sort of praise the new NBC series “Kidnapped” hopes to win as it goes to the corners of the five boroughs to tell the ticktocking tale of a wealthy Upper East Side couple, the Cains, whose 15-year-old son is kidnapped before the first commercial break and who, by the second, have turned for help to a lone wolf ex-FBI agent, Knapp, whose motto is “suspect everything.”

Whenever possible, the creators of “Kidnapped” eschew indoor sets to place the action -- or even brief exchanges of dialogue -- on a riverside helipad, say, or a Central Park bridge or in the bowels of the subway. They want the city to become “another character” as the whodunit, which arrives Wednesday, unfolds, they hope, over 22 weeks. That will be a drama within the drama, though, for, as with any new show, the audience quickly will determine whether “Kidnapped” wins a full season.

In the end, that verdict is likely to be determined by how viewers take to the key characters (Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany as the wealthy parents; “Six Feet Under’s” Jeremy Sisto as their hired kidnap-solver) and whether they are hooked by the Cains’ ordeal during a TV season when a parallel universe missing-person serial, “Vanished,” is being offered on Fox. But the team behind “Kidnapped” believes the ever-present city can make a difference, giving it a more visceral feel than shows like “NYPD Blue,” which actually was made in L.A. and got its New York street cred by shipping the actors here to shoot a week or so of exteriors each August.

“You can absolutely create the illusion of being in New York from L.A. or Toronto or Montreal, but in New York, you don’t have to create an illusion,” says Jason Smilovic, the series’ 32-year-old writer-creator.

“You can shoot an alleyway in L.A. and say, ‘This is New York,’ but you can’t cheat the Statue of Liberty. You can’t cheat the Chrysler Building.”

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OUT AND ABOUT

ON a recent morning, Smilovic was overseeing a location shoot with just that landmark Manhattan skyscraper in the background. He and 140 others -- doing this is expensive -- were across the East River in Queens, at waterfront Gantry Park, doing two scenes for their seventh episode. The kidnap investigator played by Sisto first is taken by limousine to meet a senator who is finishing an outdoor press conference. The pol pulls away from the media swarm, climbs in the limo and says, “Mr. Knapp, I’m Senator Ross -- I’m the man you think is .... “ It seems he knows Delany’s character, the rich mom.

That’s enough of a tease to lead into a commercial break, and after it comes the next scene, a walk-and-talk between the two men along the waterfront, as barges chug up the river and traffic whizzes up Manhattan’s FDR Drive.

To Smilovic, that sort of image makes the city more than mere window dressing for a suspense tale. For while the main characters’ lives and perceptions have been profoundly altered by the kidnapping, “One of the metaphors is that all of this has happened, but the cars are still driving along the FDR. Nothing has changed.”

Smilovic grew up on suburban Long Island, the son of an insurance salesman who owned video stores on the side. He flunked out of Buffalo State before passing through a community college, picking up a “tribal tattoo” on his right bicep and absorbing “The Godfather’s” message that most people are a blend of good and evil (“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli”). The wandering kid finished his studies at the University of Maryland and by 28 was creating a series for ABC, “Karen Sisco,” based on the Elmore Leonard book and Steven Soderberg film “Out of Sight.”

Smilovic’s co-executive producer of “Kidnapped” is veteran director Michael Dinner, who transplanted his family here from Santa Monica for two months to shoot the pilot and first episode but more recently has been in the editing room in Los Angeles, where the post-production team is based.

Dinner says only 25% of the shooting is on the soundstages at Silvercup Studios in Queens, a converted bakery used by movies from “When Harry Met Sally” to “Gangs of New York.” He, like Smilovic, sees a different metaphor, though, in “Kidnapped’s” extensive location work: “the contrast between great wealth and poverty,” as when one abductor holds his rich victim in a graffiti-covered building under the elevated train.

“A guy can live in a $40-million apartment on Park Avenue, you can live in a mansion in the sky, but you walk the street essentially like anyone else,” Dinner says. “The city was always a character in our notion of what the show should be.”

Because of city tax incentives, the team shoots within the boroughs, scouting for a remote house on Staten Island for a scene, even if it might be easier to find one in New Jersey. The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting credits the tax breaks for an upsurge in local filming that includes several other new series: NBC’s “30 Rock,” with “Saturday Night Live’s” Tina Fey as the head writer of a TV show; ABC’s “Six Degrees,” about strangers living together in the city; and “The Knights of Prosperity,” ABC’s comedy about a janitor who sets out to rob Mick Jagger’s apartment. And that’s not counting the ongoing series made here, most notably Dick Wolf’s three “Law & Orders.”

“Kidnapped” will face another three-headed TV franchise, CBS’ “CSI: New York,” in its 10 p.m. Wednesday slot, along with ABC’s “The Nine,” about the aftermath of a bank robbery.

Dinner figures they’ll know after two weeks whether “Kidnapped” has found an audience and has the potential to duplicate Fox’s blockbuster “24” -- or whether it will be 13 episodes and out. He says they’re confident they’ll get to play out the story they envision -- in 1,200 pages of script and 22 episodes -- but “if we have to end the story at the 13th, we can do that.”

That’s one reality of TV. Another is that there are millions more stories in the Naked City. Indeed, Dinner’s 3-year-old son may have come up with one while here this summer. The director came back from shooting “Kidnapped” and the boy breathlessly told him, “I went to the Empire State Building and I went to the top and I was standing on a rocket ship.” He was convinced the entire city had rocket ships on top of the buildings because of the water towers.

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paul.lieberman@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

It’s criminal

You get the memo? The one calling for crime dramas -- extra points for serialization -- and ominous, one-word titles?

“Smith”: About a band of brilliant thieves -- but it’s not all about the crimes they commit. CBS, Tuesdays.

“Kidnapped”: An upper-crust New York family gets a shattering phone call: Their 15-year-old son has been -- yep, you guessed. NBC, Wednesdays.

“Runaway”: A father wrongly accused of a crime must try to figure out who’s trying to frame him. In the meantime, he must take his family and -- yep, you guessed it. CW, Mondays.

“The Nine”: What happened to nine people held hostage for 52 hours in a bank robbery gone bad? ABC, Wednesdays.

“Standoff”: FBI hostage negotiators by day, canoodlers at night. Fox, Tuesdays.

“Justice”: Behind-the-scenes of a new trial each week. Fox, Wednesdays.

“The Knights of Prosperity”: This hapless band of would-be thieves has set its sights on superstar Mick Jagger’s Manhattan pad. ABC, Tuesdays.