Nick At Nite Program Mirrors TV's Golden Age

Over the past four years, baby-boomers have been able to relive their childhood via Nick at Nite, the quirky cable station that airs reruns of such TV series as ``Mr. Ed,'' ``My Three Sons'' and ``The Donna Reed Show.''

Tomorrow, Nick at Nite tries something new: an original show. ``The Early Days'' is a pilot for a regular series set during the Golden Age of TV. The initial episode visits the chaotic debut of ``The Sam Arnold Show,'' a mythical variety show within the show. The half-hour comedy also goes behind the scenes with Sam (Ray Gill), his ex-wife, Elise (Janet Zarish), and the cast and crew of ``The Sam Arnold Show.''

The pilot, which is in black and white and in color, was created and written by Will McRobb and Joe Stillman, with ``I Love Lucy'' writers-creators Bob Carroll and Madelyn Davis serving as creative consultants.

``The Early Years'' is not a nostalgia sitcom in the vein of ``Happy Days'' and ``Laverne & Shirley.''

``The interesting thing about the program is that we are trying to capture the magic of what we call the Golden Age of Television,'' said Geoffrey Darby, senior vice president, Nickelodeon-Nick at Nite Productions. ``We are not going back and making a sitcom about the Golden Age of Television. We are going back and trying to give people a place where there are good stories, well-made, that sort of emotionally tug you.''

McRobb, the mastermind behind the inventive series promos seen on Nick at Nite, added, ``We wanted to recapture the feelings that people had back then. People used to get dressed up to watch TV. . . .

``We were kind of hoping not only to re-recreate the historical details but also the attitude toward TV that it is a wonderful thing, a kind of innocent thing. Nobody knew how it worked or where it was going to go, but it just felt right. I think part of it was an emotional feeling. That took a lot of rewriting.''

Carroll and Davis, McRobb said, came aboard after the project's first draft. ``They wrote the first five years of `Lucy,' so we went to them for tips and ideas and they gave us great advice to make it more authentic.''

Darby hopes ``The Early Days'' will help define what Nick at Nite calls TV Land. ``The reason we created TV Land is to give Nick at Nite a place,'' he said. ``It is a place, not just an idea. TV Land is a place where those characters (from old sitcoms) are alive and we treat them as if they are alive. We treat the fact that Mr. Ed can dial a telephone and talk as real. It is a place that has an emotional hook with our audience.

``There are many reruns in our world and a lot of them don't actually belong on Nick at Nite. You wouldn't see something that just came off network programming, like `The Cosby Show,' because there is actually a better show that defines TV Land, like `Father Knows Best.' We think the next stage is to create product and TV programs that are truly representative of TV Land.''

McRobb takes the concept of TV Land very seriously. He has a true love for the classic series seen on Nick at Nite. ``I grew up watching stuff like `The Brady Bunch' and `The Partridge Family,' '' he said. ``I think I feel the way most people do about early to mid-'70s TV, that it was schlock that ruined my brain.''

``The Early Years'' isn't the only new series on the drawing board. This month, Nick will shoot a pilot for a sitcom titled ``Hi, Honey I'm Home.''

``This is high concept,'' Darby said, ``this is like a horse that can talk. It's about rerun families. When they get canceled on TV, they don't go away. They go into the sitcom relocation program and they are placed in modern-day color setting. But they are still the characters that existed on the (vintage) TV show. They are placed there until they get picked up by another channel and put back on the air. It's a clash of 1950s values with 1990s values. And that clash provides the humor.''

``Hi, Honey I'm Home,'' will air on Nick early next year. Darby said that if the pilots do well they will become weekly series next June.

``We will air them in a block and call them `Nick at Nite New,' '' he said.