Northern Exposure -- True North -- The Whimsical Reality Of `Northern Exposure' Has Run Off With Viewers' Imaginations

The last frontier. Our 49th state of mind. Home of cardboard log cabins, TV's sexiest unconsummated romance and its most famous uncircumcised (that we know of) barkeep.

We refer of course to the fictional Cicely, Alaska - the backwater where Dr. Joel Fleischman, New York native and Columbia University med school graduate, has been exiled as per the terms of his student loan.

And we inform you that whoever said you can't get there from here was wrong.

Via television, the directions are simple: Consult your local listings. Millions already have, turning "Northern Exposure" into the sneakaway hit of the spring and summer. Members of the un-Exposed who want to see for themselves what all the hoo-ha is about can tune in for the show's season premiere tomorrow at 10 p.m. on CBS (Channel 7).

If traveling via automobile, snowshoe or dogsled in search of true North, follow the signs to Redmond, Wash.

We refer of course to the land of the midnight mercury-vapor streetlight. The last frontier, tasteful architecture-wise. Home of numerous jiffy marts and Microsoft and - a hidden nugget - the industrial park that harbors the interior sets for "Northern Exposure."

Oh, it is a primitive and magical place, this 28,000-square-foot former warehouse, like Disneyland pre-Space Mountain. Burly stagehands lumber about uncaged. A prehistoric cave - complete with tiny Cro-Magnon end tables crafted of bones - takes shape for the filming of a brief dream sequence. Actors who play Cicely's cast of eccentrics appear on the premises, borne by all manner of conveyance: Harley-Davidson; Range Rover; horse.

To be sure, the town created here each week isn't on any map. What places worth visiting are?

Cicely. They liked the sound of that.

"It's a woman's name," says Joshua Brand, who settled on it with "Northern Exposure" co-creator John Falsey ("St. Elsewhere," "A Year in the Life"). "And it's pretty. And it's delicate. And Alaska is so rugged and wild."

According to the fictional history of Cicely, the town was founded by two 19th century lesbian lovers, Cicely and Roslyn, who lent the town its name and started its tradition of tolerance for alternative lifestyles. One of this season's episodes will travel back in time to the pioneer days.

In the actual history of appellations, Cicely originated as a variant of Cecilia, which in Latin means "blind," and which commemorates St. Cecilia, the virgin martyr who sang while being tortured.

Chris "In the Morning" Stevens is Cicely's patron saint of music. He programs the local radio station, KBHR, playing everything from Dwight Yoakum to Louis Armstrong. At times he confounds Maurice, who owns KBHR, by spinning obscure tunes or quoting Jung.

"Chris needs to belong," says John Corbett, the actor who landed the part after reading a few lines of Walt Whitman at the audition. "This town really gives him that."

Corbett is himself as rootless as a gypsy. Raised in West Virginia, injured in a California steel mill, he studied drama in junior college, and abandoned a brief job as an L.A. hairdresser to pursue acting full time.

Most of the other "Northern Exposure" stars have bought or leased places in the area to live while the cameras are rolling. Corbett prefers hotels.

"There is something about fresh sheets," he says. "Those tight sheets. So tight you can't hardly wedge your feet in. There's nothing like a bed made by a professional."

Will Joel and Maggie - the beautiful but nettlesome bush pilot - ever cut the rutting and make some sheet music of their own? Smart money says yes.

"It's the conceit of the relationship that something draws them close and then keeps them apart at the last minute," a parka-clad Rob Morrow says between scenes. "How many situations can you create where people almost get it on?"

The electricity between these two, although of the alternating current variety, is undeniable.

"I think she likes his intelligence," says Turner. "He challenges her."

Joel is in turn magnetized by Maggie's self-determination, Morrow reckons. "And her looks."

Janine Turner has the cover-girl features of a Wilhelmina model, which she became at age 15. "Northern Exposure" has put her back on the covers again. In what may be the truest measure of the show's popularity, its penetration into the supermarket shopping Zeitgeist, she also made the front page of a tabloid this summer, for her fledgling romance with a cowboy.

"My publicist said, `You should be glad,' " she recalls. " `You got above the title.' "

Frozen yogurt parlors. While-U-wait lube jobs. Sizzlers.

Maurice Minnifield dreams of Cicely becoming the jewel of a future Alaskan Riviera. He would probably settle for its turning into a reasonable facsimile of Redmond.

Maurice orbited the earth in a NASA capsule. Outer space, his home state of Texas and his adopted Alaska are probably the only places big enough to contain Maurice's ego and ambition.

Maurice needs so much breathing room that when he drives his Caddy convertible around town, he keeps the top down, even in the winter.

Barry Corbin, the 50-year-old Texan who plays Maurice, has been known to ride to the set on Snippers Mistique, his registered palomino. Corbin, whose personal wardrobe runs to boots, spurs and shiny belt buckles the size of TV dinner trays, admits to injecting a bit of cowboy into every part he's ever played, from MacBeth to Uncle Bob in "Urban Cowboy."

"Northern Exposure" appeals for some of the same reasons as a John Ford Western, Corbin reckons.

"We're in a mythic, bigger-than-life environment," says Corbin. "They talk about the quirkiness. But also it is a gentle world, in many ways an idealized world. Which I think we're kinda hungry for."

Yep, this must be make-believe. In the Cicely fantasy, Corbin says, Maurice's strip mall dreams don't stand a chance.

"You can't do it. It's like trying to put pavement on a marshmallow."

It's a dramedy. Or maybe a comerama.

The show's creators have spoken at length about its souffle-like airiness. When Emmy time rolled around this year, though, the producers entered "Northern Exposure" in the drama category.

Says Brand: "In the spirit of Cicely I hope people will step outside the normal limits of comedy and drama and appreciate it as . . ."

Instead of finishing the sentence he starts another.

"We have jokes in our show. But we're not really a joke-driven show. We're driven by story and character."

A few of them to come this season:

Maggie's most recently deceased boyfriend speaks to her from the hereafter, inhabiting the body of a dog.

Maurice latches onto ostrich farming as the latest scheme to bring prosperity to Cicely.

Adam, the mysterious and moody mountain man with the gourmet cookware, re-emerges from the woods to take Fleischman to his remote shack, where he is held hostage by Adam's hypochondriac wife, Eve. Brand hopes to make Adam, played by Adam Arkin, a recurring character.

"The only two things you know for sure are that he's a hermit and a highly trained chef with his finger on the pulse of the New York restaurant world," says Arkin, dressed for the part in a combination of plaid flannel and Army surplus olive drab. "He's real out-there. Even for this show."

The moose are on the loose. One wanders through town in the show's opening credits. The production office decor includes a plaque for Moosehead beer, a plastic slug with moose antlers, an inflatable moose and a topiary moose.

That was a gift from the crew to Woody Crocker, the show's production designer. His office is a trove of moose merchandise: moose-shaped suckers; a moose barometer from Ohio; a decanter of "Moose Milk."

For this season's prehistoric dream sequence, Crocker's Emmy-nominated department crafted a primitive toy moose from Tandy fur and Cornish game hen bones.

The show is nuts for details: The walls of Adam's cabin are a crazy quilt of lumber, highway signs, and a car door with window that rolls down.

Maurice's grand living room includes hundreds of hunting knives stabbed into the log walls (made from cardboard tubes), and reproductions of paintings by Alaskan landscape artist Sydney Laurence.

Maggie's house contains intricate shrines devoted to each of her five dead boyfriends. One of them, judging by the tiny skeleton preparing a California roll, liked sushi.

"You can't do this on `Designing Women' or `Golden Girls,' " notes Crocker, who turned down a feature film and a TV movie to work on the "Northern Exposure" pilot.

"I read a script and said `This is special.' It's like we all went out fishin' to a mountain stream and found gold nuggets."

It is a love for the ages, that between Holling Vincoeur, 62-year-old proprietor of The Brick tavern, and his teenaged Juliet, the former Miss Northwest Passage, Shelly Tambo. One time Holling bought Shelly a satellite dish. As if that wasn't enough proof, he also offered to be circumcised.

To commemorate the surgery, Chris played a selection from "Fiddler On the Roof."

By episode's end, Shelly had decided she didn't want Holling to change his "turtleneck." Holling, relieved, canceled the operation.

"It didn't take a great deal of imagination for the audience to see my private parts in their mind's eye," says John Cullum, the Tony-award-winning stage actor who plays Holling. "That was a touch disconcerting."

"Northern Exposure" might be the least patronizing hit show ever made about rural life, a far cry from the hick-ridden "Green Acres" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "The Beverly Hillbillies." Cicely's residents are eccentric and wise, as opposed to eccentric and dumb as stumps.

Ed is the town cinemaphile. A lover of Woody Allen and European art-house movies. An orphan. A Native American dreamer with the dazed look of someone struck by lightning.

"Try reality," Dr. Fleischman tells him in an upcoming episode, after Ed has offered up another of his silver-screen parables.

"No, thank you," Ed replies.

Ed is also a near-genius.

Recalls Darren E. Burrows, the actor who plays him: "Joshua (Brand) came to me and said, `We want to make sure Ed doesn't become Barney Fife - the town idiot.' He said, `Ed has an 180 IQ. There. I've done it. Now no one can say he's dumb.' "

Which doesn't rule out tetched.

"Waking up in the morning and being allowed to live another day - that's what keeps that perpetual smile on his face," Burrows says, squinting through a pair of violet-tinted prescription granny glasses. "If everyone were more like Ed this'd definitely be a better place to live."