Claude Brooks started off the year in “Claude’s Crib,” a comedy he created and produced for the USA Network. So how is it that eight months later he is a co-star on “Hitz,” a comedy for the UPN Network (8 p.m. Tuesdays on WPWR-Ch. 50)?
Brooks says the reason is that USA, which has a strong diet of original dramas on its schedule, “went out of the comedy business,” and even though Brooks’ new show is about the cut-throat music industry, that statement sounds as if it would fit a worthy premise for a series on the instability of the television industry.
The savvy, 28-year-old actor says “Claude’s Crib,” in which he starred as an aspiring disc jockey and college student running a house full of boarders, pulled in decent ratings for USA. But audiences left the network in droves when “Weird Science,” the show that followed “Crib,” came on.
“(USA) only developed one other show to go with ours,” Brooks says, adding that pilot wasn’t strong enough to become an ongoing series. So USA canceled both “Weird Science” and “Claude’s Crib.”
A spokesman for USA said that the network decided it “wanted to go in another direction” regarding its comedy programming, and that Brooks wasn’t far off the mark in the reasons why “Claude’s Crib” was canceled. He added that USA believes “Claude is a great talent, is going to be a big star, and would love to work with him again one day.”
Says Brooks, a New Yorker who has been acting since he was 9: “It’s almost like getting kicked out of school because you’re getting good grades, but you just don’t fit in with the other kids.”
Losing “Claude’s Crib” was even more disappointing, since Brooks also was a co-producer, an aspect of television he finds appealing and expects to continue to do in his career.
Brooks holds no malice for USA for the cancellation. And it was his relationship with Paramount, “Claude’s Crib’s” production company and the owner of UPN, that got him the job on “Hitz.”
“UPN needed someone attached to the product in order to pick it up,” Brooks explains. “They had approved me. Since I already was in the Paramount family, it was cool.”
Brooks plays record executive Busby Evans, who along with his partner Robert Marsh (Rick Gomez) hustles to sign up acts for HiTower Records, an independent label run by loutish Jimmy Esposito, played by Andrew “Dice” Clay.
Although Brooks isn’t a producer on “Hitz,” he does serve as a creative consultant, an important element for him to sign on the dotted line.
“After all this building that I’ve been doing on my producing end, to kind of put that aside and just strictly act at this point of my career I don’t think is a great idea.”
Brooks says he’s involved with “almost all of the music that happens on the show. I’m a part of it in terms of the people we’re bringing on. And they run all the storylines by me. In terms of the actors, I’m like the leader . . . that in itself is a job that I actually enjoy doing.”
Even Dice accepts him as the actors’ representative. “We have no trips about that at all,” Brooks says.
Brooks admits he had some preconceptions about the Diceman, the outrageous standup comedian known for dirty limericks and incendiary material against women and gays.
“All the stuff that you would think, like `Oh, man, it’s great, we’ll have strippers around here,’ uh-uh, none of that stuff,” Brooks says.
Brooks says that, no matter how bad his experiences were with the way “Claude’s Crib” ended, television still doesn’t have anything on the music business, which is why he says “Hitz” will be a fun show to watch.
The music industry is “definitely worse than the TV industry,” Brooks stresses, “because of what desperation will lead you to do. And people will do anything to sign acts. Stabbing someone in the back is not the out-of-the-ordinary way that you do business . . .”
Sounds like a candidate for the feel-good series of the season.
– Where’s the remote: Ninety minutes of “Caroline in the City?” That’s what it took for the NBC comedy to wrap up its season. Those last three episodes get repeated from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday on WMAQ-Ch. 5. They set up the finale, in which Caroline (Lea Thompson) realizes she loves crabby artist Richard (Malcolm Gets), only to have that message intercepted by his manipulative ex-girlfriend (Sofia Milos).
– Zelda Harris, the bright young star of Spike Lee’s “Crooklyn” and ABC’s “Second Noah,” stars as Clover, a strong-willed girl who clashes with her stepmother (Elizabeth McGovern) after the girl’s father (Ernie Hudson) dies. “Clover,” a new USA Network movie based on the Dori Sanders novel, airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday.
– Jennifer Lien makes her last appearance as the alien Kes (producers admit they couldn’t find meaningful enough story lines for her character), and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) goes from Borg to babe with a major makeover, in Wednesday’s edition of “Star Trek: Voyager” at 8 p.m. on WPWR-Ch. 50.
