PASADENA, Calif. -- The popular comic strip "Dilbert" is about the weirdness and insanity of the workplace. So you might think that when cartoonist Scott Adams started working on a TV version of his creation it would provide fodder for the strip.
After all, is there a weirder or more insane place than Hollywood?But, much to Adams' surprise, it didn't turn out that way.
"I was very disappointed that it was not worse," Adams said of his experiences in Hollywood. "I was kind of expecting that I would be feeding the comic strip for months just based on going to meetings in Hollywood."
The problem has been that, while "Dilbert" is a commentary on the everyday workplace, the network television business isn't exactly an everyday workplace.
"Sadly, nothing down here is like the real world," Adams said. "I mean, 'Dilbert' exists because it's kind of a common experience -- exaggerated, but at least they started with that common thing. Everything down here starts out exaggerated and gets worse. So there's almost nothing that's kind of the L.A. TV-making experience that I can take back and say, 'Let's build this into a strip.' It just doesn't translate -- doesn't work in Cleveland, really."
But he and executive producer Larry Charles ("Seinfeld," "Mad About You") are working hard on translating "Dilbert" from the comic pages to the TV screen. The show premieres Monday at 7 p.m. on UPN/Ch. 14.
If you're familiar with the comic strip, you'll meet a lot of familiar characters in the TV show. At the center, of course, is the much put-upon Dilbert (voiced by Daniel Stern), a drone whose life is made more difficult by everyone around him.
There are his fellow engineers -- the slothful Wally (Gordon Hunt) and the angry, caffeine-addicted Alice (Kathy Griffin). There's the bane of their existence, the Pointy-Haired Boss (Larry Miller).
There's his contemptuous pet, Dogbert (Chris Elliott). And the optimistic rodent Ratbert. And Dilbert's mother, Dilmom (Jackie Hoffman).
It's very much like the comic strip and very much different at the same time.
"The hardest part is that my whole life is taking complicated things and fitting them into three sentences," Adams said. "That's the thing I do. And now I've got to take a simple thing and, working with Larry and the writing staff, make it 50 and 60 pages. So it's kind of like thinking inside-out. It's just the hardest thing in the world for me."
This isn't the first attempt to translate the comic strip into a television series. Adams and an entirely different set of producers and writers tried to make "Dilbert" a live-action sitcom for Fox a couple of years ago, and the effort ended in failure after a weak pilot was produced.
"We just stepped back and asked ourselves, 'Should we try to tweak that or start from scratch?' We really just looked at all of the options again, and UPN was the best option and animation seemed to make more sense than live-action, having tried it once," Adams said. "I'm a lot more involved with this than I was with that, which was really minimal involvement. But I'm pretty deeply involved in this on the creative side."
(Not to mention that the animatronic dog they tried in the live-action pilot wasn't exactly a huge success. "I think they spent upwards of 20, 25 dollars on it," Adams said, "and it looked every bit of it.")
What won't make Adams and Charles' job any easier is the high expectations the folks at UPN have for the series. They've been building to the show's premiere for months, and the network-wannabe that desperately needs a breakout hit -- some would say in order to survive -- is looking to "Dilbert" to be that hit.
"That's a totally external problem," Charles said. "Our problem is doing the show. We have enough pressure just getting the show right."
"We're just working on the show, and if it's good, good things will happen for everybody involved, and that's all we can concentrate on," Adams said.
And, while Adams said he largely works from home, he is deeply involved in the TV series -- even if he can't use any of his show-biz experiences to actually write either the strip or the show.
"Hollywood seems very self-reflective," Adams said. "Like in the real world, if you want to know how to be you look at your Uncle Bob. . . . or maybe it's your co-workers. But I think people down here tend to look at the movies. And so I noticed a lot of people doing, 'I'm the king of the world!' in meetings and stuff. So you have this whole self-reflective thing that you just don't see anywhere else."
OK BUT NOT GREAT: From what critics have been shown so far -- and the pilot was still undergoing some revisions as the days to its premiere ticked away -- UPN programmers shouldn't get their hopes too high.
Not that "Dilbert" is a bad show -- it's OK, with some funny moments in Monday's premiere. But it's not exactly a distinctive, groundbreaking show like "The Simpsons." It's not so good that people are suddenly going to start turning to a network they generally ignore en masse.
There may be a decent number of "Dilbert" fans who tune in, but they're going to be the hardest group to please. The pacing of the show is, of course, greatly different from the comic strip, and that may put some of them off.
A pretty good show might be enough on a more established broadcast outlet, but it's going to be hard to establish a show -- let alone a network -- with a program like "Dilbert."
TALK TO THE ANIMALS: According to Adams, talking animals -- dogs, rats -- fit quite easily into the world of corporate satire.
"If you've spent any time in the cubicle environment, you've been surrounded by weasels, for example," Adams said. "Weasel, dog -- how far apart are they, really?
"And the beauty of cartoons is that once you get somebody to buy the talking dog concept, talking rat -- not such a stretch. It's kind of an easy transition. And as long as they carry the attitudes with them, that's the main thing. The physical form doesn't seem to matter too much."