PBS GRABS LATINO DRAMA THAT CBS LET SLIP AWAY.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

PASADENA - Nearly two years after it was first produced for CBS, ``American Family'' will make itself at home on PBS.

The series about a multigenerational Latino family living in Los Angeles, which will debut in January 2002, was created by filmmaker Gregory Nava (``Mi Familia,'' ``Selena,'' ``El Norte'') and stars Edward James Olmos, Raquel Welch, Constance Marie, Sonia Braga and Esai Morales. It will be produced by Los Angeles PBS affiliate KCET.

After CBS passed on the pilot last season, it allowed Nava to shop the series elsewhere. PBS, Nava said in a Friday morning press conference before a seriously waning number of the nation's television critics, was the most passionate about his show, if perhaps not the most financially viable.

``We feel he has the budget to do the show he wants to do,'' Pat Mitchell, PBS president and CEO, said, adding that the cast members took significantly less money to be involved with the series than they could have made elsewhere.

For the past 18 months, said Marie, who in the series will play an attorney whose liberal politics clash with those of her vastly conservative father (Olmos), she had been following the show's struggle to land a deal.

``I had given up on it (after CBS passed), because that's what you have to do. But I followed it very closely - I said, 'Call me as soon as you know anything,' and called them asking, 'How can I help?' Because it really is a labor of love.

``It's a miracle that it's come back from the dead,'' Marie marveled, adding that, as she is a third-generation Los Angeles Latina who didn't learn Spanish until age 23, the issues of culture and identity particularly resonate in her. ``My dream is to have some little Latina girl watch this and feel included where I always felt excluded. Mexicans always considered Mexican-Americans as Americans and Americans always considered us Latinos. I was like a coconut - brown on the outside, white on the inside. I didn't realize how Latino I was until I became an actress.''

Welch, too, has experienced a cultural schizophrenia in her career (her father came from Bolivia, while her mother was British). ``I've made it a point to be in the closet as a Latina,'' she said, ``because, frankly, it's a disadvantage in this industry. I was asked to change my name from 'Raquel' to something else because they said it sounded 'ethnic' or 'weird.' You're expected to homogenize yourself down to no characteristics so nothing gets in the way of people identifying with you.''

Nava, however, stressed that the series would focus on stories accessible to all demographics. ``Almost all families have some other cultural component to them, so it's kind of sad that they're left out in the media,'' he said, adding that PBS will give him more creative freedom than a broadcast network would. ``We'll be able to do more interesting and adventurous kinds of things. We'll deal with tougher issues that the networks tend to be more skittish about.''

``If it's a hit,'' Olmos quipped, ``I'd hate to be in CBS' shoes.''

As part of the complicated deal, 20th Century Fox will distribute the series internationally. PBS is also negotiating with a Spanish-language American network to air the series in Spanish.

PBS president Mitchell also announced that the network has juggled its schedule this season, with each evening having a specific theme. Sundays will feature history and biography, highlighted by the ``American Experience'' and ``American Masters'' documentary series.

Mondays will focus on drama, and that is where ``Masterpiece Theatre'' will set up camp. Tuesdays will feature science-themed series such as ``Nova,'' while Wednesdays will bring performance programs and series with limited runs. ``Frontline'' will air on Thursdays, and public affairs programming will dominate the Friday schedule. ``Antiques Roadshow'' will air on Mondays and Thursdays.

Member stations of the PBS consortium will adhere ever more closely to the system's programming, with 90 percent of the stations expected to air 450 hours of the PBS prime-time schedule roughly concurrently this season, and 500 the next.

Environmentalist Jane Goodall (``My Life With the Chimpanzees''), one of the scientific sources for the upcoming PBS documentary series ``Evolution'' - which features an extensive session on evolution's ramifications for theologists of various stripes - suggests squaring God and science isn't as difficult as others have made it to be.

``As I was growing up in a family where people went to church and we believed in God and everything, but at the same time I was totally fascinated by evolution, there never seemed to me to be a conflict,'' she told journalists on Thursday via a satellite hookup from Africa. ``I met Louis Leakey, who'd spent his entire life searching for the fossils of Stone Age ancestors, nor did he see a conflict between science and religion.

``From my own perspective, the more I learn about the amazing natural world and the gradual evolution of complexity and diversity, the more filled with wonder I become at whatever force created this incredible beauty with which we're surrounded.''

Sam Phillips, founder of the legendary Memphis label Sun Records, the subject of the upcoming ``American Masters'' PBS documentary ``Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records,'' said he once tried to extend some advice to Elvis Presley, long after Phillips had sold his contract to RCA Records and the King's career was getting unduly Vegas-y.

``I said, 'Tell Elvis to get out on the damn street corner and live' - I mean, behind gates, it's like being in prison, you know?'' Phillips recalled. ``I think that really is the only thing to encourage Elvis to see these other things (in the world of music) coming along. Because this was such an unusual individual and he didn't want to let (his manager, Col. Tom Parker) down and certainly not his fans.''