"Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" is going to be a different show this coming season. The only question is - how different?
Those involved all say it won't be that different. But the fact is that Deborah Joy Levine, the show's creator and original executive producer - the guiding force behind "Lois & Clark" last season - is gone and new people are in charge."The show will change a little bit," said Robert Singer, who's been brought in to replace Levine. "It'll be more action-oriented.
"We really hope to retain the charm that Deborah brought to it. So I don't think that it will change dramatically."
(Levine is still listed as a consultant to the series, but she's off producing another show this season. Singer is best known for his work on series like "Midnight Caller" and "Reasonable Doubts," but the science fiction series "V" is also on his resume.)
The general feeling among the show's producers, writers, stars and ABC executives seems to be that "Lois & Clark" tried to do too much last season.
"We wanted to be an action-adventure show, but we also wanted to appeal to women with the relationship between Teri (Hatcher, who plays Lois) and Dean (Cain, who plays Clark)," said Ted Harbert, president of ABC Entertainment. "We wanted to appeal to kids with the whole superhero thing. We wanted to appeal to men with the relationship and the action.
"And when you bite off that much, you often don't chew it correctly. What you do is you do a little bit of each OK."
As a result, viewers can expect to see more action this coming season. More special effects.
But not, everyone insists, at the expense of the romantic triangle of Lois, Clark and Superman.
"I feel like what's going to happen is we're going to take the things that work for the show, and we're going to concentrate more on those," said Dean Cain, who stars as Superman/Clark Kent. "The romance worked - we're going to concentrate plenty on the romance. The action worked - we're going to concentrate on the action.
"I think all we're doing is just enhancing the things that worked on the show."
Singer said he intends to keep the romantic tension going as long as possible.
"I think we can keep them apart romantically longer than Dave and Maddie (on `Moonlighting') or Remington Steele (and Laura) because Superman has a real problem," he said. "I mean, Clark would love this to happen, but to reveal this secret to Lois could be dangerous to her. There's a lot of ramifications to this triangle.
"So I think we can bring them together, take them apart, dance around this. . . . I think we'll just keep playing with it until it really feels old for some reason, and then deal with it."
Everyone involved is also promising that the show won't become too serious.
"I think the banter and the fun between the characters is going to exist, and I think it's going to continue and actually move forward," Cain said. "It'll be quicker and better and cleaner."
What we do know for certain is that Superman will be facing a wider range of villains. Lex Luthor (John Shea) is somehow going to survive the multi-story tumble he took in the show's final episode of last season, but he'll appear in only a few episodes this coming season.
"I think that was conceptually a tough thing to do, to have the same bad guy every week," Singer said of last season. "I think in our minds, and probably in the audience's minds it's like - when are you going to catch this guy?"
So Superman will be facing a wide range of "formidable" villains - including some from the Superman comic books.
"Some of them will be toward fantasy. Others will be based in sort of modern reality," Singer said.
And while most of the cast will return, Tracy Scoggins, who played vampy gossip columnist Cat, will not.
One thing that won't change is the time slot. Harbert said he remains committed to airing "Lois & Clark" on Sundays at 7 p.m.
"We picked it up for 22 episodes," he said. "That's patience. That's commitment."
He said the network is also giving the producers more money to work with this season - making it possible to up the ratio of special effects.
"I don't want to overplay this changing too much, because we have a real solid audience that comes to us every week," Singer said. "We, and the network, and anyone concerned with this show would like to have that audience grow a little bit. Keep the core audience that we have, but get a few more share points."