DANSON'S INCREDIBLE JOURNEY\Former Sam Malone cheers his newest adventures - as Gulliver and\in real life.

Byline: Ray Richmond Daily News Television Writer

The barroom is closed, so now Ted Danson is trying on a padded room for size.

But it's not what you think.

Danson - back on television with a new wife, a new life and a renewed zest for flexing his acting muscles - stars as Dr. Lemuel Gulliver in "Gulliver's Travels," a dazzling, ambitious four-hour adaptation of the Jonathan Swift classic that airs at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on NBC (Channel 4).

That's right. Sam Malone is out of contemporary Boston and into 18th-century England (not to mention Lilliput and Brobdingnag and Laputa), and there isn't a barfly in sight.

Whose idea was this? Why Danson?

"He was the tallest actor we could find," joked producer Duncan Kenworthy.

Indeed, the choice of Danson might seem curious in that he's not an Englishman and does not even attempt an English accent in the role (perhaps smartly).

"Ted's just got this tremendously sympathetic quality," Kenworthy said. "He's somebody you just like."

And when you think about it, no actor is quite as qualified as Danson to stand both really tall and really small, as he does in "Gulliver." He's had plenty of experience of late with each.

It is in fact ironic that Danson should be portraying a man who, upon his return from an eight-year journey, is deemed mentally unstable due to his fantastic stories and frequent acting-out during flashback episodes.

There was some questioning of the actor's stability, too, when he tossed himself into a marriage-busting relationship with Whoopi Goldberg and performed an allegedly racist blackface routine during a Friars Club roast of Goldberg that resulted in a media pummeling a few years ago.

Though Danson won't apologize for the incident that he still calls "both deeply terrifying and deeply satisfying," he did acknowledge in a telephone interview that his general state of mind back then represented "a little bit of an adolescent time in my life.

"What I mean by that is the sense of 'Don't tell me what to do!' I came to that stage rather late."

The "adolescence" arrived just as Danson was wrapping up the 11th and final season of NBC's "Cheers," his role of Sam having earned him two Emmy Awards and a place in television history as an icon for the ages. It was 1993, and Danson felt he had to step back from the show that made him a wealthy man to "scare myself and see what I was made of."

"Cheers" had provided Danson a rare security even as his feature film career was stagnating. Aside from 1987's "3 Men and a Baby" and its 1990 sequel "3 Men and a Little Lady," he has more or less shadowed fellow TV star Tom Selleck with a string of popular flops such as "Made in America," "Getting Even With Dad" and "Pontiac Moon" (although 1989's "Cousins" was universally praised).

Even so, playing Gulliver represents a vast change - and dramatic stretch - for the 48-year-old Danson.

"It was exhausting, it was exhilarating, it was horrendous," Danson said.

It was also expensive and richly detailed. The film cost $28 million to make on location in London and Lisbon, Portugal, which makes it the most costly four hours of television ever done, said executive producer Robert Halmi.

But Halmi, who committed much of his own cash to the project, maintains that he got his money's worth.

"Gulliver is probably going to change television," he said. "TV has never done anything like this before when you consider the scope, the subject matter and the effects, which are extraordinary. It's also an opportunity to expose people to a piece of work that's been greatly underestimated."

Director Charles Sturridge maintained that while there have been previous "Gulliver's Travels" adaptations - including a 1939 feature-length cartoon from Max Fleischer and a weird live action/animation flick in 1977 - this is the first time that all four sections of the 1726 novel have been put on screen.

The basic story finds Dr. Gulliver, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, washing ashore in warmongering Lilliput, where everyone is tiny and he is a giant, and later journeying to Brobdingnag, where Gulliver is a pint-sized freak-show attraction in a land of 80-foot giants. Part one takes place in those two lands.

The second installment of NBC's adaptation shifts with Gulliver's rescue at sea by the odd intellectual inhabitants of a flying island called Laputa. He later traipses into the lair of a sorcerer, is held prisoner in an underground cavern of sickly immortals and finally discovers the land of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos in which horses are the civilized species and humans the savages.

To tie things together, this "Gulliver" is framed by our hero's long-delayed return to England and the loving arms of his wife (Mary Steenburgen, Danson's real-life wife) and son (Thomas Sturridge).

Because the stories Gulliver weaves about his journey are so unbelievable, he is judged to be mad. The story is told in flashback, shifting seamlessly between past and present, as Gulliver's sanity is questioned and an evil doctor (James Fox) has him committed for his own selfish ends.

The effects are magnificent, sometimes even breathtaking, with much of the magic supplied by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in London. They incorporate more than 100 computers to create realistic editions of both miniature and oversize worlds.

It required Danson - in wig and costumes - to perform a rigorous and awkward acting dance that found him often working in front of plain blue screens and waiting for the computer magic to place him into the scene in the proper size and scope.

"It's really hard because the party's over, all your friends have gone home and you're sitting on a sound stage with people being very technical saying, 'No, no, no, look over here, look over there,' " Danson recalled.

"There is one scene where I'm in a courtyard and about 6 inches tall, and a servant is carrying me with a little doll's armchair on a silver platter so I can have a conversation with the queen as we walk around this yard. I had actually just been sitting in a room looking up, but the computer plastered my butt down."

The technology floored Danson. It also worried him. A little.

"They don't really need actors anymore," he said. "We'll all be back doing street theater soon."

Not that Danson would mind that, as long as his sweetheart, Steenburgen, is there with him. The pair tied the knot in late September after filming on "Gulliver" wrapped. By all accounts, they remain totally blissed out and have made noises about wanting to do a TV series together.

"I think both of us desire to not be away on location and raising four teen-agers at the same time," Danson said.

Danson also is working on carving out a niche beyond that place where everybody knows your name and are always glad you came.

" 'Cheers' was an amazing experience," Danson said. "It was a gift. There were so many wonderful things and wonderful people connected with it. There was a time when I wished it would never end."

But end it did, reportedly due for the most part to Danson's decision to move on. "Roseanne" may continue on without John Goodman, but there could be no "Cheers" without the womanizing Sammy Boy.

It may be an impossible dream that Danson ever will escape from Sam's typecasting shadow. But the guy has done some pretty fair dramatic work over the years, earning praise for his portrayal of the murdered cop in 1979's "The Onion Field" and winning a Golden Globe for the 1984 incest film "Something About Amelia."

"I giggle with complete delight when I watch ("Gulliver")," Danson said. "It is the most amazing journey on film I've ever seen. So I giggle, hoot and, you know, jump up and down when I watch this. And usually I slump, hide and cower.

"God, wouldn't it be nice to walk down the street and have people yell, 'Hey, Gulliver!' instead of 'Hey, Sam!'?"

A guy can dream, can't he?

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Photo (1--Cover--Color) Ted's EXCELLENT ADVENTURE Danson is truly 'see worthy' in NBC's 'Gulliver's Travels' (2) "It is the most amazing journey on film I've ever seen," says Ted Danson of the TV movie version of Jonathan Swift's classic 18th-century adventure "Gulliver's Travels." (3) The lone survivor of a shipwreck, Danson's Dr. Lemuel Gulliver tries two vastly different lands on for size.