STICKING TO THE SCRIPT.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

While the upcoming 2005-06 TV season looks to be the year of the ``Lost'' imitators, it might also mark, perhaps more significantly, the season that the sitcom made a comeback.

We're talking baby steps here, no full-blown triumphal return. The sitcom has been on life support for years now, suffering from diminished ratings and air time on network schedules. Of course the genre hasn't been helped by the fact that what the networks offer up as funny has been more cringe-inducing instead.

But at May's network upfronts, where executives unveiled their new schedules for advertisers and the media, the most enthusiastic responses were for new comedies, particularly UPN's ``Everybody Hates Chris,'' Fox's ``The War at Home,'' CBS' ``How I Met Your Mother'' and NBC's ``My Name Is Earl.''

``There are a few on the schedule that look promising,'' agrees Robert Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television. ``It looks like some effort is finally being made and that every network executive has made comedy development a major priority.''

``Everybody Hates Chris'' comes from comic Chris Rock, who will narrate this show about his teen years in the 1980s, when he was bused to a white school two hours from his home. UPN is so confident about this show, it's putting it in direct competition with NBC's faltering ``Joey'' on Thursday night. If UPN can indeed beat NBC on its once-indomitable Thursday, a new world order is at hand.

Former ``Late Show With David Letterman'' writers contribute ``How I Met Your Mother,'' which has an odd premise: A quarter-century in the future, a man tells his children the story of his courtship of his wife in 2005. Since we already know the outcome, any sense of drama about the relationship is diminished, but the contemporary couple (Josh Radnor and Cobie Smulders) is appealing, and Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan are amusing in supporting roles.

CBS' other new comedy, ``Out of Practice,'' about a family of doctors, isn't as promising but looks competent enough and, since it will be in a protected time slot, between the hits ``Two and a Half Men'' and ``CSI: Miami,'' could easily be another success.

Fox's ``The War at Home'' stars Michael Rapaport and Anita Barone as the parents of a typically dysfunctional family - hardly groundbreaking stuff, but the pilot is well-executed, and it fits in well amid ``The Simpsons'' and ``Family Guy.''

NBC's ``My Name Is Earl'' is reminiscent of the Coen brothers' ``Raising Arizona.'' It concerns a hick (Jason Lee) and a hilarious life-altering event that inspires him to make amends with everyone he has ever wronged - all 248 of them. (NBC's plummeting fortunes suggest it'll have to make amends with advertisers, who found this the only really promising new show on its fall schedule.)

ABC also had a midseason comedy with potential, ``Emily's Reasons Why Not,'' a successful-single-girl-looks-for-love sort of thing starring Heather Graham.

Oddly, all of these sitcoms share one trait: They all feature either narrators or characters directly addressing the audience, much like the widely admired but viewer-impaired comedies ``Arrested Development'' and ``The Office,'' not to mention ``Scrubs,'' ``Malcolm in the Middle'' and ``The Bernie Mac Show,'' former hits in the twilight of their life spans.

(Fox's scheduling ``Arrested Development'' on Monday, with no lead-in, could actually help the show, whose numbers always looked bad because of the number of youth and family viewers it lost due to its kid-friendly lead-ins.)

``Sitcoms are such a crapshoot,'' says Earle Marsh, co-author of ``The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows.'' ``Look at 'Everybody Loves Raymond' - no one thought it was going to be a big hit. What they thought would be big hits, most died on the vine. It's tough - the public can be fickle, and scheduling can kill a show or make something look better than it is, as in the case of 'Yes, Dear.' ''

But Marsh - and many industry observers - were pleased that the networks largely have avoided reality programming on their fall schedules (although there will be no end of the stuff over the summer). Moreover, the new reality shows announced - NBC's ``Three Wishes,'' ABC's midseason ``The Miracle Workers'' - are feel-good shows in the ``Extreme Makeover: Home Edition'' mode rather than back-stabbing competition or extreme dating programs.

Indeed, given ABC's wild success this past year with scripted programming - it came up with three hits (``Desperate Housewives,'' ``Lost'' and ``Grey's Anatomy'') and one steady performer (``Boston Legal'') - networks are rediscovering the joys of inspired, original fiction.

``Lost,'' in particular, has inspired a number of paranormal, serialized thrillers, much the way ``The X-Files'' did almost a decade ago (none of those imitators, by the way, became hits). A mere two years after having been written off as expensive and not very viewer-friendly, serialized drama has returned in a major way.

ABC has added ``Invasion,'' about aliens overrunning a small Florida town, while CBS' ``Threshold'' does the same thing on a global scale. NBC's ``Fathom'' explores the fallout of the discovery of a strange new aquatic species, while the WB's ``Supernatural'' finds two brothers on a witch-hunt road trip.

(Fox also has two new serialized dramas, though they eschew supernatural elements: the self-explanatory ``Prison Break'' and ``Reunion,'' a murder mystery that charts the 20 years after a group of friends graduate from high school.)

Will any of ``Lost's'' many imitators find fans? Newark Star-Ledger TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz says, ``Think of this in terms of personal relationships: You meet a woman who is beautiful, intelligent and charming. Then, a few weeks later, you meet another woman, who's not quite as good-looking, almost as smart and kind of charming. What do you do? Stick with the original.''

Meanwhile, the number of crime procedurals expands unabated, and the man behind most of them - producer Jerry Bruckheimer - will become the busiest man in TV history, with no fewer than 10 shows on the networks next season (blowing the doors off Aaron Spelling's old record of eight). He already produces a full third of CBS' prime-time schedule and will add to his resume The WB's first crime drama, ``Just Legal,'' as well as his, yes, first sitcom, WB's midseason ``Modern Men.''

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

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13 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) ``EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS,'' UPN

(2 -- cover -- color) ``HOT PROPERTIES,'' ABC

(3 -- cover -- color) ``MY NAME IS EARL,'' NBC

(4 -- 5) New sitcoms set for the fall TV season include CBS' ``How I Met Your Mother,'' left, and Fox's ``The War at Home.''

(6 -- 7) ABC, which saw ``Lost,'' left, catch ratings fire last season, hopes for similar success with its new ``Invasion'' drama.

(8) Fathom

(9) Commander in Chief

(10) Criminal Minds

(11) Reunion

(12) Three Wishes

(13) Cops

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