It's Difficult To Be the Producer of a TV Hit

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Changing a Hit TV Series Stirs Buzz ...or Backlash

By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 19 — As cliffhangers go, they were two of the better ones that ended last spring's television season.

On "House" Dr. Gregory House fired one of his long-suffering assistants, leading the other two to resign and leaving him without a team to help him explore the hospital's intractable medical mysteries. On "Prison Break" Michael Scofield, having secured freedom for his wrongly imprisoned brother, finally had a chance to join with his true love, Dr. Sara Tancredi, only to be cast back into prison before the two could consummate their futile relationship.

As the two shows, both stalwarts of the Fox network's prime-time lineup, began to unwind those scenarios this season, they have followed markedly different trajectories. The producers of "House" set up a compelling "Survivor"-like competition among potential replacements for the absent assistants, who themselves soon reappeared, providing fans with a comforting continuity in the program's fourth season.

On "Prison Break" the producers' planned story line for the new season resulted in a dispute with one of the show's central actors, foiling many of the writers' plans. Two years of teasing romance between Sara and Michael ended shockingly with her head in a box — causing an uproar among some dedicated fans.

The two shows have produced different results in the ratings race as well. The audience for "House" has remained relatively steady this year, maintaining last year's 18.5 million weekly viewers, up from 13 million in the show's first season.

"Prison Break," whose fans have taken to Internet bulletin boards and blogs to express their outrage, has seen its audience shrink by 15 percent this season, to 7.6 million through the first four episodes, from 9 million last season and 9.2 million its first year.

The different directions of the two shows demonstrate some of the difficulties that television producers face as a successful series begins to age. When is it necessary to shake up an established hit enough to create buzz and attract new fans? And is it possible to do so without alienating those who have made a series a success in the first place?

"It didn't feel like it was necessary," David Shore, an executive producer and the creator of "House," said of the changes dictated by last year's finale. "The show was working very nicely. But I think it was a matter of staying ahead of the curve, of doing it before it felt necessary. Once the show starts to become tired, once we are doing the same situations over and over again, it's too late at that point."

"House," which started three years ago, was helped by having a relatively small starring cast. Only six regular characters appeared in more than half of the episodes of the first three seasons. On "Prison Break," the number was nearly twice that in its first two years.

"House" also used to its advantage a plot device established in the first season: House's assistants were enrolled in a three-year fellowship program. "We weren't worried about that, but it worked out nicely," Mr. Shore said. "It was not like, if we don't get rid of them now, the audience is going to go, 'Hey, wait a minute.' But it opened things up a bit and expanded our world, and created more opportunities."

Now, Dr. House has whittled a new group of potential fellows to 7 from 40, and he will cull the herd further when the show returns tomorrow night. Hugh Laurie, who plays Dr. House, said he was unsure when last season ended how the characters' dismissals would be resolved. "But I suspected things would not go on indefinitely as they were," he said, "and it seemed like a good time to let the whole thing expand slightly."

To be fair, the challenges that the producers of "House" faced were more easily solved than those that have bedeviled "Prison Break." In large part that is because "Prison Break" is a serial, with a continuing story line that does not allow the show to stay in one place for long. While "House" contains multi-episode character arcs, the show deals with a new medical mystery each week.

When "Prison Break" had its debut two seasons ago, serial dramas were all the rage, with producers at every network hoping to ride the success of Fox's "24." But while "24" resets its clock each season, "Prison Break" is constrained by its continuing plotline, its title and numerous other decisions made by the producers in Season 1.

In the most egregious example, Scofield tattooed the blueprints of the Fox River State Penitentiary, the first-season prison, across his chest, back and arms. Now, he is in prison in the jungles of Panama. Even in that steamy setting, he constantly wears long-sleeve shirts, mainly because of the cost and effort of replicating the tattoos for each day of filming.

"The show was originally designed as a mini-series, then as a two-season series," said Matt Olmstead, an executive producer who is the show runner of "Prison Break." "The first two seasons were essentially the first and second hour of 'The Great Escape,'" that is, the plan to break out of prison, followed by the manhunt.

When it came time to plot the third season, the producers said they felt they had exhausted the immediate possibilities of life on the run; returning some of the characters to prison, however, would create new opportunities for them to interact. But that raised the question of what would motivate Scofield to compromise his values and make the alliances necessary to escape once again.

Mr. Olmstead said that Fox executives had rejected an initial idea on how to proceed, leading the producers to conclude that revenge was the best motive — and therefore that Sara had to die.

Sarah Wayne Callies, the actress who portrayed Sara Tancredi, did not want to be killed off. If she was, she wanted to be paid for a full season's work, something the producers did not want to do. After Ms. Callies rejected offers that would have allowed her to participate in only part of the season, the producers opted for her quick demise. They used a body double to stand in for her in a few scenes this season, taking her off the regular payroll.

Although speculation about Sara Tancredi's fate has been leaking out for a few weeks, Monday night's episode of "Prison Break" will be the first since her fate became known, and the network and the producers will be watching closely to see whether more fans have given up on the series. On the Fox Web site's message boards, fans of the show from the United States, Canada, Australia, Bulgaria and Algeria have written in to complain.

"From what I've seen it's been a mixed reaction," Mr. Olmstead said. The fans who are upset "have been more taken by the way Sara was killed off," he added. "But that also bolstered a new antagonist on the show. It showed that character is not someone who makes hollow threats. And it created a lot of buzz within our audience."

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