CBS TOYS WITH FUTURE IN `EARLY EDITION' : EARLY EDITION.

Byline: Jay Bobbin and Kate O'Hare Tribune Media Services 

What if you actually knew what was going to happen tomorrow, with just enough time to do something about it?

That's the dilemma facing Gary Hobson (former ``Homefront'' star Kyle Chandler) in the new CBS series ``Early Edition,'' premiering Sept. 28. Gary is an ordinary Chicago stockbroker who is trying to rebuild his life after his girlfriend tosses him out. He moves temporarily into a hotel, where, one morning, he hears a thump on his door.

Gary opens the door to find a marmalade cat and a Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. He glances briefly at the newspaper before his pal Chuck (Fisher Stevens of ``Short Circuit'') hustles him off to the office. But before the day is through, Gary realizes that what he scanned in the paper was not today's headlines, but tomorrow's. He and Chuck are too late to rescue that day's paper from the trash, but another arrives the next morning, along with the cat.

Executive producer Bob Brush (previously of ``The Wonder Years'') said that many people might take the day-ahead knowledge ``Early Edition'' furnishes and use it to their own benefit. ``If you think of the reality - and we're trying to do this in a fairly realistic mode - after your first (selfish) binge, you would suddenly find yourself one day looking down at your paper and seeing probably 25 stories of people really in trouble. You could make that change (to prevent those), and I think that's the point we're trying to get at here.

``We're certainly not saying that Kyle's character is some kind of an angel from heaven who has all the right instincts,'' Brush continues. ``He doesn't. He's very oppressed a lot of times by having this newspaper come; it's a terrible responsibility, and he'd rather it didn't show up at his door. We're not trying to set up some kind of paradigm for saintliness on Earth. We're saying, `Here's a normal guy, and this would probably happen to you in the long run if you got this thing.'''

Still, ``Early Edition'' co-star Stevens said, ``What I personally would have done would be to steal the sports scores, go to my bookie and make as much money as possible, then give about 95 percent of it to charity. I'm a very guilty person also. What (Chandler's) character goes through - because he does have this knowledge of these events - is, `Why me?' and `I have to do something about this.' I think I also would feel that way.''

One of the inherent problems Hobson continually faces is in getting others to trust that he can make a difference in their lives, if they only will listen to him. ``Since no one is going to believe, either going in or coming out, that you affect (their futures),'' Brush said, ``there's no sense in either trying to take credit for it or trying to contact somebody else to help you. In the case of Gary Hobson, the most convenient thing to do is get in and get out. It's practical, and it gives him a Zorro-like quality that he doesn't stay around most of the time for the adulation and applause.''

Additionally, Hobson has a reliable barometer in Marissa (Shanesia Davis), who underscores the notion that those who literally are blind sometimes have the clearest view of things. ``She is the moral side of whatever decision Gary makes,'' Davis said. ``It's not always about doing the right thing because that's what you're supposed to do; that's one-dimensional, and it will get tired really fast.''

Davis is sighted herself, and she did research at the Chicago Guild for the Blind to prepare for her ``Early Edition'' role. ``They're going to be my post to go back to,'' she said, ``to make sure that I get the realism correct.''

For Brush, the idea goes back to the small-town concept of neighbors helping neighbors. ``No single person can change the situation in Bosnia or fix the welfare program, but I think part of the message here is the idea that one can make a difference by sharing one's own humanity with other people. You can't solve all the problems of society, but you certainly can reach out and do something.

``In this case, Gary doesn't have a choice. If he doesn't reach out and do something, people will die or people will be miserable. He could not care, but he does. That's why the paper's not coming to somebody else.''

When: 10 p.m. Sept. 28

Network: CBS

Starring: Kyle Chandler, Fisher Stevens, Shanesia Davis

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: (Cover--Color) EXTRA! EXTRA!

Read all about it

`Early Edition' offers peek at future