BOXED IN TV NETWORKS LOADED UP ON SERIAL DRAMAS THIS FALL, BUT VIEWERS MAY FEEL `LOST'.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

In January 2003, Lloyd Braun, then chairman of the ABC Entertainment Television Group, said, ``We have been actually very careful, as have our producers, to not create a show that is too serialized.''

That was then. Today, with the success of ``Lost'' - a show developed by Braun, mind you, before he left the network - and ``Desperate Housewives'' (developed by his colleague Susan Lyne, who also subsequently departed ABC), serialized dramas with complicated mythologies are all the rage.

``A nighttime serial is the equivalent of going into a relationship,'' says Bob Thompson, the founding director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television. ``Sitcoms don't mind if you miss an episode or two. Serialized dramas expect to be called upon every week.

``Network executives may say they don't rerun well - yes - that they're expensive - yes,'' Thompson continues. ``All that said, a good one can be some of the most popular viewing imaginable. The bad thing about serialized dramas is if they don't work, you kill the time slot. If it does work, it's more habit-forming than anything else on TV. 'Lost' became a huge hit.''

And hits inevitably beget imitators. This fall, following ``Lost's'' lead, supernatural-themed serialized dramas are all over the networks' schedules:

--CBS' ``Threshold'' stars Carla Gugino as a think-tank expert in disaster scenarios recruited by the government to investigate evidence of an alien invasion. Two other series borrow aspects of ``Threshold'': ABC's ``Invasion'' (which will follow ``Lost'' on its Wednesday schedule, replacing ``Alias,'' another serialized drama that's moving to Thursdays) explores the fallout of an alien invasion on a small Florida town after a hurricane, and NBC's ``Fathom'' stars Lake Bell as an oceanographer probing a new life form discovered under the sea.

--Fox, home to the terrorist thriller ``24,'' TV's most stringently serialized series, adds two ambitious dramas. In ``Prison Break,'' Wentworth Miller stars as a man attempting to help his brother (Dominic Purcell) - who's on Death Row after apparently being falsely convicted of murdering the vice president's brother - execute an audacious escape. ``Reunion'' examines the lives of six longtime friends from their high-school graduation in 1985 to one's murder in 2005; each episode spans a year in their lives.

--Two other new paranormal shows include quests that follow an episodic structure. ABC's remake of ``The Night Stalker'' has Stuart Townsend playing Carl Kolchak (a role made famous by Darren McGavin), a newspaper reporter covering ghoulish murders - this time around, he seeks to clear his name after his wife's bizarre murder. The WB's ``Supernatural'' puts two brothers on a witch-hunt road-trip in search of forces that immolated their mother and one young man's girlfriend.

``I have tremendous faith in the sci-fi and horror genres,'' says Brannon Braga, one of ``Threshold's'' executive producers and a longtime producer on the ``Star Trek'' franchise. ``I'm thrilled the networks are taking these risks. 'Lost' opened a big door, and I'm grateful to it.''

``Serialized drama is the one thing TV can do that no one else can do as well,'' says Thompson. ``You might have a six-part 'Star Wars' saga over 25 years, but on television, stories can go on potentially forever - 100, 150 hours. You can tell stories you couldn't anywhere else.''

Paul Scheuring, creator of ``Prison Break,'' agrees. ``I come from features ('A Man Apart'), where the stories are closed-ended - it's all about getting to the ending. The interesting thing about TV is that it's about never getting to the ending.''

Hence, Scheuring continues, ``I had to know where this is going. If this goes 50 episodes, that's roughly a 2,200-page script, ultimately. I definitely know where we're going. When I laid out the entire season for the network, they were shocked, actually. I even offered to tell them what happens in season two.''

Scheuring's show is unique in that if it continues into a second season, it will become a different drama altogether - more of a ``Fugitive''-type show as the sundry characters who escape from the prison go their separate ways and attempt to elude those pursuing them.

Fox's ``Reunion'' is likewise genre-busting in that if the series continues into a second season, it would do so with a predominantly - if not entirely - new cast. Each season is designed to focus on one mystery among one group of friends, then move on to a new one the next year.

``I was intrigued by that idea,'' says creator Jon Harmon Feldman, ``although I always thought, what do you do when you fall in love with a character? But then I considered reality shows like 'The Real World' and 'Survivor,' and they turn over their casts to great effect every year.''

Serialized dramas toe a fine line between sating die-hard fans' sophisticated narrative needs and remaining user-friendly to neophyte viewers.

``Starting out, all we have now are lofty ambitions,'' ``Threshold's'' Braga admits. ``The intention is to ensure that each episode has a stand-alone story that is resolved.

``Our pilot is a perfect template: (The main) story is resolved, things are left dangling, there's even a cliffhanger. Each episode, we want to take the team out, investigate some freaky thing, make it scary, add a piece of the puzzle - and, by the end of the season, a puzzle will be solved. Viewers can appreciate the larger mystery or just tune in and have the (excrement) scared out of them. Is it hard? It's really hard to do.''

``Some episodes will be easier than others,'' says ``Reunion's'' Feldman. ``We're looking for a story that audiences can find relatable and extraordinary at the same time.

``The goal is to provide for new viewers something self-contained and get them up to speed, and, for regular viewers, to add an extra layer of serialized stuff - they'll remember the clues referring back to previous episodes.''

Only ``Prison Break's'' Scheuring admits, ``It's definitely a serial, so we do need to keep people up,'' though he adds, ``there will be recap moments - we've built into the tattoo (extravagantly sported by Miller's character and concealing a map of the prison) stand-alone situations to help people keep up.''

All three producers agree that DVD boxed sets of TV series' seasons have made their shows more viable. ``24'' was the first series to exploit viewers' hunger to see serialized dramas' episodes back-to-back-to-back; ``Lost'' is currently cashing in - though its first season won't be available until September, it's been high on Amazon.com's best-seller lists for over a month.

Says Scheuring, ``People love sitting down for a weekend and knocking down the whole season. They want to watch the larger narratives. The format offers a larger canvas; the story becomes epic.''

Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for the Newark Star-Ledger, says DVDs have provided a ``revolution'' for network programming.

``It's an amazing development,'' he says. ``In the 19th century, people could experience Charles Dickens' novels week by week in publications, or wait until it came out as a book. They engaged with the work in a way that made sense for their lives. That's the way it is now with DVDs.

``When '24' was released so soon after its season ended, it was preparation for the following season, and ratings went up,'' Seitz adds. ``DVDs make it easy to catch up - you get, say, 22 hours of TV for 30 bucks.''

Seitz continues, ``They used to say of serialized TV, 'The train has left the station.' This is the equivalent of stopping the train and letting people get on. It's part of the TV evolution - TV accommodating viewers instead of the other way around.''

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

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4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Appointment TV

Will serialized shows make us slaves to our calendars?

(2) Wentworth Miller, left, and Dominic Purcell plan an escape in Fox's ``Prison Break,'' above.

(3) Carla Gugino and Brian Van Holt look for evidence of an alien invasion on ``Threshold,'' left, on CBS.

(4) Stuart Townsend and Gabrielle Union star in ``The Night Stalker,'' a serialized ABC drama.