****WONDERLAND**** (10pm ET/9pm CT) NEW SHOW 
With millions packed into New York City, there is bound to be a lot getting into your head. Wonderland is a gripping, fast-paced drama about doctors who work in the psychiatric and emergency units at Rivervue Hospital. With personal lives as complex as their patients' minds, the doctors of Rivervue endure joys and sorrows that often mirror the triumphs and tragedies of the afflicted they strive to heal. In the realm of psychiatric medicine, this public, city hospital is the Mecca, and its doctors are among the world's best, brightest and toughest. Shot documentary style, this is television as life, with all of the ebbs and flows that go with it.

You'd expect Martin Donovan to be disappointed by the cancellation after a mere two episodes of his ABC-TV series, mental hospital drama Wonderland. And you'd be right. But he wasn't as surprised by that harsh outcome as you might assume.

"I wasn't totally shocked. This profession is 90% discouragement. It's 90% rejection and disappointment and bad reviews or people dismissing your work or ignoring it. It's really not even 10% of the time where you get the rewards," Donovan told me a few days ago, on the set of Lifetime movie Custody of The Heart. 

"Which is why you have to do it for yourself. You have to really love the work. It has to be a very personal thing. If you're relying solely on outside (feedback), which I'm not saying you don't need, but if that's all you're looking for, you're going to be a really bitter, disappointed person." 

NEW YORK -- ABC is burying "Wonderland"after just two episodes, but don't rule it dead yet. The network says it may resurrect the drama after the May sweeps.

Set in the criminal psychiatric ward of a fictional Manhattan hospital, the gritty drama won high critical praise -- if few viewers.

Blame the competition from NBC's "ER," which is in the same time slot. Last Thursday it had about twice the combined audiences of "Wonderland" and CBS' faltering new series "Falcone." 

"Wonderland" has had troubles on other fronts, too. Mental health professionals argued for a boycott of the series, saying it demonstrated "reckless indifference" to the mentally ill.

When NYPD Blue Meets ER Leery about yet another medical drama on the tube? I was, too, but I confess I'm hooked after watching the first two episodes of ABC's Peter Berg-produced/written/directed Wonderland, which premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. (opposite ER). The intense, fast-paced show takes place at a New York City psychiatric hospital, and in the first episode, a crazy man opens fire in Times Square, killing two cops, wounding pedestrians and eventually causing a shocking trauma to one of the medical staff members in the ER. The show, which stars Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs), Martin Donovan (The Opposite of Sex), Michelle Forbes (Homicide: Life on the Streets) and Michael Jai White (Spawn), only gets better in the second installment.

"Wonderland" (9 p.m., Channel 9) is a new ABC drama that asks the question: What if "NYPD Blue" took place in a psychiatric hospital? 

"NYPD Blue" fans will recognize the bob-and-weave camerawork and the up-close-and-personal portraits of the dedicated professionals working at Rivervue Hospital (named for the show's obvious inspiration, New York's Bellevue). The sporadic bursts of violence and temper seem well-rehearsed as well. 

"Wonderland" is also a very talky show. But unlike "NYPD Blue," it has no vernacular. There is at least one sympathetic character here -- Ted Levine as the head shrink -- and a couple of interesting ones, including "Homicide" alumna Michelle Forbes. But none of these people has a distinct voice yet. And given the perilous time period for "Wonderland," up against "ER," it may not have much time to develop one. 

Less interesting is Billy Burke's character -- not so much because of him but because his psycho girlfriend reminds me a lot of the psycho girlfriend on last week's new show, "The Beat," which in turn reminds me that too many TV scripts are written by guys. 

Dark Shadows 
"Wonderland," set in a fictionalized Bellevue (think "ER" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" filmed by Quentin Tarantino) is spellbinding TV. 

BY JOHN LEONARD

Since nothing else seems to work, why not throw excellence at ER and see what happens? All at once like a speed-freak rush, Wonderland (Thursdays, starting March 30; 10 to 11 p.m.; ABC) is simultaneously an ensemble series set mostly in the psych ward of a public hospital in New York City; a handheld inquiry into the nature of madness and mercy; a savage critique of the politics of justice; a dream-tracking of fault lines and fissures in the seething self; a descent by bathysphere into a therapeutic hell that makes Girl, Interrupted, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and The Snake Pit look like summer camps; and -- as if it were possible to hear the music of wounds whose edges crave to heal, played on strings of raw nerve -- a cantata of the damned.

It is a Wonderland in which Alice herself is stalked. Executive producer Peter Berg, who used a knife on people in Chicago Hope, has written and directed the pilot. Co-executive producers Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Tony Krantz have apparently spent time in places like Bellevue. But they also seem to have consulted Robert Altman (on cross-cutting scenes, overlapping voices, and extreme behavior) and maybe Paul Thomas Anderson (an excess of everything except frogs). And the shrinks they've rounded up to staff this frantic intensity are as frazzled as the clientele. 

Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine), chief of forensic psychiatry at "Rivervue," is fighting his estranged wife (Patricia Clarkson) for custody of their two children. Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan), a specialist in psychiatric criminology, worries about his wife, Dr. Lyla Garrity (Michelle Forbes), who, besides being in charge of a critical-response facility for patients suffering broken-mind emergencies, is five months pregnant and feeling deprived of caffeine and nicotine. Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Michael Jai White) goes home from boot camp for med students to single fatherhood. Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke) is the compulsive womanizer. Dr. Heather Miles (Joelle Carter), as you'd expect with a name like Heather, is the nubile resident.

All these doctors, and their nurses, and their security guards, talk all the time, and only occasionally hear one another, because their patients are screaming. And so are cops, the media, and the D.A.'s office screaming, because Rivervue's patients are usually suspected perps. Outside the psych ward, their gaudy derangements are grisly crimes. They are what one doctor calls shadow people, who embody society's worst fears -- to be wished away or put down like a mad dog. "I catch ghosts," Lyla tries to explain to a review board. And those ghosts don't show up in the blood work; medical technology can't see the misfiring of a neurotransmitter that turns into an instruction from Gaia, Zeus, or Satan.

Lyla is explaining herself to a review board because she turned away a walk-in patient named Rickle (Leland Orser), who will later on take rejection in the Coliseum Books store from a young woman looking at a paperback copy of Pindar's Odes as a paranoid-schizophrenic excuse to gun down six people in Times Square. Lyla turned him away because the computer was down, she didn't have access to his previous history, and she made a judgment call that he wasn't dangerous. On the other hand, as she admits to her husband, she was sick and tired and just didn't like him: "I wanted him gone." On a third hand, she will never be 100 percent successful catching ghosts because she isn't psychic. And on a fourth, one would think she's already been punished enough for her mistake by what happens in the emergency ward. I'm not going to tell you what happens in the emergency ward in the very first hour of 
Wonderland, but it might be the most shocking thing I've ever seen on commercial television, especially for those of us who felt that Homicide never quite recovered from the departure of Michelle Forbes.

Meanwhile, between competency hearings on his parenting skills, Dr. Banger must try to persuade a babbling Rickle to take his medication against the advice of an attorney who wants him in "psychotic free fall" to bolster his insanity defense, while an A.D.A. seeks to choreograph the gunman as a "poster child" for capital punishment in what Banger refers to as "the Giuliani death dance." And a Morgan Stanley investment banker (Jay O. Sanders) is so distraught at his wife's leaving him that he isn't safe so 
long as he's still attached to his own wrists. And if a 71-year-old grandmother really attacked her silent husband with a pair of scissors, what about her knitting needles? And rising all around these screaming wounds, these manic arias, is a choral movement of Greek myths and French bras, of flying-saucer wallpaper and hypodermic syringes, of handcuffing and channel-surfing -- a liturgy of panic disorder, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, and suicide. This is the sort of series so craftily written that after a ballpoint pen fails to work in the first hour, in the next hour we can count on a fountain pen's being used to kill somebody.

If shrinks are generally reviled in novels and films, they are more often valorized on the small screen -- maybe because an intimate medium is preddisposed to believe, like a Freudian, that most of our ogres live at home, under the bed, instead of outside in the lousy weather of politics or history. Still, it's a friendliness to the profession that not only includes Hal Holbrook and Tom Conti in TV movies but goes back to Bob Newhart's therapy group, Allan Arbus as Sidney Freedman on M.A.S.H., Elliott Gould in Sessions, Robbie Coltrane as Cracker, and Carolyn McCormick on Law & Order, as well as forward to Frasier and Dr. Katz. Even in this distinguished company, Wonderland, like The West Wing, is as good as television gets.

There's no lack of crazy folks on TV. As in Stark Raving Mad, as in "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," as in, that Dharma? Woo, is she cra-a-zy! Mentally ill, though, that's another story. "The shadow people," as the psychiatric drama Wonderland (ABC, debuts March 30, 10pm ET) calls them, pervade overstressed hospitals and precincts in real life, yet lurk invisible in prime time's institutional dramas. This literate and impeccably executed series, alas, may prove why. From the opening scene of a patients' group session developing into a shouting match, to the story of a multiple murderer with a Zeus complex, Wonderland all but begs viewers to flip to the comparatively cheery bloodbaths of ER.

That would be a shame. Wonderland is not about craziness. Its much repeated mantra and true theme is "balance" - mental, professional and personal. It's aa frustrating gal for both patients and the well-cast staff, such as Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine), who juggles chaotic patient evaluations with Zen cool (he's the Phil Jackson of psychiatry) which fighting for custody of his kids in his spare time.

Ultimately, Wonderland disturbs not because it is violent or loud - though it can border on pathos - but because, unlike crime or injury, its subject defies easy blame and explination. But creater Peter Berg (Very Bad Things) balances its starkness with writing of remarkable empathy. As Banger says at his custody hearing, "I have a tremendous respect for [my children's] minds, for the beauty of their minds." Wonderland has a tremendous respect for its audience's minds, and for the beauty of even a shattered psyche.

Why We Need Wonderland
By: Judith Shulevitz
Posted Friday, March 24, 2000, at 7:28 a.m. PT

Every once in a while, a talented person takes a threadbare television formula, turns it inside out, and finds something extraordinary in the lining. Peter Berg has done this with Wonderland, the E.R.-like hospital drama that makes its debut opposite that show on ABC next Thursday night, March 30, at 10 p.m. Eastern time. (Berg is an actor turned writer, director, and producer who played a doctor on Chicago Hope.) Concept-wise, the twist is minor--a switch in setting, from a public general hospital modeled on Cook County Hospital in Chicago to a public mental hospital modeled on New York City's Bellevue. But the ramifications are enormous.

To begin with, there's the messiness of it all. Emotional disturbance defies easy television-style closure. The people who show up in the admitting rooms of public mental hospitals are people for whom happy endings are no longer imaginable. Having lost spouses and jobs and sanity, or never having had any of these things in the first place, they're living lives of unthinkable complexity. And unlike emergency-room doctors, forensic psychiatrists can't cut, snip, or even medicate their patients' pain away. No one gets better by the end of the hour. The human detritus keeps pouring in. 

But so do the dramatic possibilities. Dealing with this much raw suffering puts doctors under extraordinary strain, so naturally they sprout personal problems. The people they treat are going through similar stress and trouble, just on a vastly larger scale. Since the doctors and patients have something in common, the writers can establish a powerful rapport not just among the physicians, as on most hospital dramas, but between them and those they treat. The one-on-one encounters between the psychiatrists and their charges unfold like musical duets running up and down the scales--they're variations on emotional themes--and a rich sense of the main characters' inner lives accrues scene by scene, show by show, with the slow, serial development that only television allows. A handsome young doctor grappling with his fear of emotional involvement conducts several intake interviews in which nightmarish relationship stories emerge. One man has tried to kill himself because his wife just left him. A husband and wife married for 50 years have begun to drive each other, literally, mad. We begin to understand why the doctor is afraid. 

Have I mentioned that the actors are good? They are, especially the two lead male psychiatrists, the understated Martin Donovan--the star of many Hal Hartley movies and also a character in the recent Portrait of a Lady--and Ted Levine, who played the killer in The Silence of the Lambs. Levine brings the same kind of scary concentration to his portrayal of Dr. Robert Banger, a man who's overinvolved with, and almost too compassionate toward, his violent patients, but who is himself weirdly bottled up, with several flavors of impatience and rage waiting to erupt. 

Another reason to watch this show is that it's important. I know that sounds portentous and implies that the series is secretly boring. It isn't, though, because it does something rare. How long since you saw a network television series accord the mentally ill--including those who have committed heinous criminal acts--anything like dignity? How long since a network television series treated anybody on the wrong side of the law with respect? The main story line in the first two episodes of Wonderland deals with a psychotic who's a barely disguised version of Andrew Goldstein, the young New Yorker who, having been unable to obtain care and medication from state mental hospitals, lapsed into schizophrenia and pushed a young woman off a subway platform into an oncoming train. In the somewhat more overwrought Wonderland version of events, he's a graduate of Columbia University with a classics degree who shoots two cops and kills three civilians in Times Square, then in a struggle at the hospital plunges a needle into the belly of a pregnant psychiatrist, who happens to be the admitting doctor who turned him away four days earlier. 

Goldstein was convicted of murder last week, despite his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The Wonderland writers would probably take issue with that outcome, but in their adaptation of the story, they stay focused on the difficult questions: the unbearable amount of damage the man wreaks, the failure of the mental-health system to stop it, the terrible sadness of a person driven to do things he doesn't understand by voices in his head. By reminding us of the humanity of the violently ill, Berg has found a way to sneak onto television a political agenda infrequently furthered by the popular media, because it depends on the ability to get beyond stereotypes. I hope Berg can resist the pressure of time and ratings to cheapen his vision. Call me crazy, but I think shows like this are our salvation.

Next stop, "Wonderland'
by Tim Goodman
Wednesday, March 29, 2000 

ABC's riveting new hospital show is shaping up as TV's next great dramatic series 

When "ER" first burst onto the scene, it was a mix of supreme drama and over-the-top hospital theatrics - yelling, running, cameras swooshing around the room. The worry then was that even though you couldn't take your eyes off it, who could bear the clatter? 

A lot of people, apparently. "ER" has been the most dominant drama on television since it debuted. With two other hospital dramas already on the schedule - "Chicago Hope" and "City of Angels" - a cynic might say a fourth is overkill. But ABC's new midseason replacement series, "Wonderland," is a special kind of hospital drama, one that recalls all the greatness of "ER" without having yet fallen into the soap-operaesque storylines of a tired front-runner. In fact, "Wonderland" is the new "ER," the fresh take with a twist. Anyone with an inkling that "ER" has played itself out and needs a discharge should take a look at this show's premiere (10 p.m. Thursday, Channel 7). Yep, a head-to-head battle with the champ - conventional programming wisdom would call that a suicide mission. 

However, "Wonderland" is worth skipping "ER" for. It isn't about ruptured spleens and heart attacks. It's about the mentally ill, the psychotics and schizophrenics and the severely depressed. It's about the doctors who take care of these special cases, the so-called gatekeepers holding the barbarians back from society. 

Produced, written and directed by Peter Berg (himself an alum of "Chicago Hope," as well as an independent filmmaker), "Wonderland" is a riveting if challenging bit of television. Berg and a team of writers spent months at New York's Bellevue hospital, where they were allowed to witness and interview doctors working with the mentally ill. They've borrowed storylines from there and have gained a convincing knowledge of psychiatry and its terms, much as "ER" mastered the fine art of yelling for drugs and clinical tools with the right words.

To further the effect of being in what is essentially an asylum, Berg uses hand-held cameras and lets the
 actors improvise when needed. This gives "Wonderland" a gritty, realistic feel. But the technique also adds a sense of chaos to the viewing experience. Watching "Wonderland" is a sensory overload, as patients scream at the top of their lungs, bang on things, turn TV channels rapidly and provide a kind of non-stop white noise over the show's dialogue.

Parents who have put to bed unruly children will find no relief here, nor will anyone else seeking to unwind from the day's work. "Wonderland" makes the frenetic talking-and-walking banter of "The West Wing" look like a mime show.

In fact, "Wonderland" has more in common with Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out the Dead" than any hospital drama on TV. 

But those who hang in there will discover the potential of television's next great drama. The doctors and patients in Rivervue Hospital's psychiatric and emergency wards are an engaging bunch. Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine, "Silence of the Lambs") heads up the forensic psychiatry department. He's the calmest in the storm - a trait he needs with a crumbling marriagge and the impending custody loss of his two beloved young sons. Levine is brilliant, by the way.

Another forensic specialist is Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan, "The Opposite of Sex"), who is married to Dr. Lyla Garrity (Michelle Forbes, "Homicide: Life on the Street"). The two are expecting their first child - and for two tightly wound people, that's just added pressure. Donovan has been wonderful in every movie he's been in and Forbes' intensity is her greatest asset. She heads up the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program - meaning she has to decide if people checking in to the crowded hospital are really disturbed or not. A misread in the pilot leads to the dramatic crux: A mentally ill man who thinks he's taking orders from Zeus guns down five people in Times Square. 

Also in the mix: young Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke), whose womanizing and fear of intimacy sometimes cloud his psychiatric evaluations; Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Michael Jai White), a physician (as opposed to a shrink) at the hospital; and resident Heather Miles (Joelle Carter), who is bright and understanding (and a potential romantic partner to Dr. Matthews). Like any good series, "Wonderland" is littered with smaller characters giving fine performances, and its "crazy people" truly get into their parts.

The writing and acting in this series are superb. And Berg hasn't tried to tell too many stories too quickly, so we can get to know the characters slowly. That said, the pilot has an explosive subplot that kick starts everything.

If you've been attracted to the reality feel of "NYPD Blue" or the fine writing of a show like "The West Wing," you'll see the potential in "Wonderland" right away. This thing is just dripping with quality. The question is whether you can adjust to the in-your-face chaos and, more importantly, if you can give up "ER."

You ought to at least give "Wonderland" a chance. It's time to switch hospitals. 

ABC's gritty one-hour drama series "Wonderland," debuting Thursday at 10, revolves around the professional and personal lives of doctors manning psychiatric and emergency programs at fictional Rivervue Hospital.

The series, shot in New York City, stars Billy Burke, Michael Jai White, Joelle Carter, Martin Donovan, Ted Levine and Michelle Forbes.

Peter Berg, writer, director and former star of "Chicago Hope," is the executive producer, writer and director of "Wonderland." He spent several months at a New York hospital researching the project and observing electric-shock therapy sessions and interviews with serial killers, schizophrenics and suicidal persons, according to ABC. Many of the stories on "Wonderland" are based on his observations.

Berg wrote the pilot, in which a Rivervue patient shoots police and pedestrians in Times Square. On next week's installment, the doctor who let him leave the hospital is hounded by the media and must face a peer review panel.

By Joannie Schrof Fischer

The man lies strapped to a gurney, screaming gibberish about Hercules, as five people he has just shot are dying all around him in an emergency room. Then, still in a fit of delirium, the schizophrenic grabs a hypodermic needle and stabs himself. A pregnant psychiatrist rushes in to wrestle the needle away, and in the struggle it pierces deep into her abdomen, through her developing baby's skull, and into its brain.

This scene of bedlam is the dramatic peak of the première episode of Wonderland, a one-hour drama set in a psychiatric hospital that will debut this Thursday on ABC. Whether critics and viewers will decide that this psychiatric version of the popular ER makes for good television, nobody knows. But even before the first episode airs, some members of the mental health community who have previewed the show believe that it dangerously misrepresents both the mentally ill and the professionals who treat them. "The show is all caricature and stereotype, and plays to people's worst fears about mental illness," says Michael Faenza, president of the National Mental Health Association, a group that represents the nation's 51 million who suffer from some kind of mental disorder.

Playing up violence. The most strenuous objection to Wonderland is that it portrays too many of its mentally ill characters as violent. One young man bites off his mother's finger and eats it, then bloodies his own head against a wall. An elderly woman obsessed with killing her husband lifts scissors above her head, Psycho-style, and when doctors pry them away she finds some knitting needles instead. Mental health professionals say this kind of depiction does enormous damage at a time when the largest cause of stigma borne by the mentally ill is the fear that they will become violent. In truth, they say, not only are the vast majority of the mentally ill not violent, but they are more likely than most to become victims of violence. 

Wonderland creator Peter Berg says that he intends the show to be constructive, shedding light on the many struggles and indignities that the mentally ill must endure. But in order to do that, he must capture viewers' attention with compelling drama, which can mean resorting to extremes. And even though only a tiny fraction of murders are committed by the mentally ill, that still makes for close to 1,000 homicides every year, says psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, author of Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis. "We can't solve the problem by pretending it doesn't exist," Torrey says. "I applaud the makers of Wonderland for having the courage to address such an explosive but important issue." Faenza has asked ABC to at least run a disclaimer before the show, clarifying that most mentally ill people pose no threat to others. The network has not yet decided whether or not it will do so.

But even if ABC makes that concession, it will not appease other critics who worry that the drama leaves the impression there's little effective help for the mentally ill. For example, when a severely depressed man who has gashed both his forearms deep toward the bone asks for help, a young psychiatrist distracted by interruptions tells the patient that recovery simply takes time. "That's offensively inept," says National Institute of Mental Health psychiatrist Philip Gold. "There are so many sophisticated, compassionate, and proven methods that offer relief to the suicidal, it's a crime to leave viewers who might need help with the impression that that's all they would get."

Berg counters that tapes of his first eight episodes are being used to train medical students and says that over time, skeptical psychiatrists will see that his treatment of mental illness is more constructive than harmful. Even so, NMHA's Faenza is mobilizing his group's 340 affiliates to register their disgust with both ABC and advertisers. Those complaints could be lost amid cheers, though, if the wider audience decides that Wonderland's crisis-a-minute chaos makes for good entertainment.

 ''Wonderland'' what the doctor ordered
 By Laura Fries

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - By creating a show built around a symbiotic relationship between the forensic psychiatric department and the emergency room of a New York hospital, Peter Berg is able to draw upon a virtual gold mine of material.

"Wonderland'' synthesizes Hollywood's holy triumvirate: It's a medical show, a police story and an emotional drama rolled into one. Full of the same type of energy and promise that "ER'' enjoyed in the early seasons, "Wonderland'' is the first series in a long while that has the actual goods to give the stalwart NBC drama a run for its money at 10 p.m. Thursday nights. To up the odds, ABC is making its strike midseason against reruns and amid grumbles that "ER'' has lost its edge.

Berg, a former "Chicago Hope'' regular, reportedly spent months researching "Wonderland'' in a New York psychiatric hospital. His dedication pays off with a realistic, utterly engrossing and intricately drawn show set in the chaotic confines of the mythical Riverview Hospital.

From the opening moments of the pilot, we quickly learn that the doctors here, while dedicated and top notch, are quite fallible; they walk a fine line between normalcy and the aberrance of the socially challenged patients who fill up the ward.

Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine) is the ringleader, a man who functions on high simmer but maintains amazing composure when it seems like everyone around him is losing control. Adding to the building pressure is Banger's divorce case and ensuing custody battle.

His staff includes Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan), whose worries include not only his patients but his pregnant wife and co-worker, Dr. Garrity (Michelle Forbes). Garrity handles psychiatric emergencies, sometimes at her own peril. Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke) is a commitment-phobic psychiatrist who often butts heads with resident Heather Miles (Joelle Carter), while the no-nonsense Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Michael Jai White) struggles to balance career and single parenthood.

"Wonderland's'' diverse ensemble cast is colorfully drawn, and the pilot sets ups some disturbing and intriguing plotlines that touch just about every character. Filmed like a documentary, the show maintains its frenetic momentum start to finish, and serves up a crackling balance between work and home life.

Levine is a standout, adding subtle layers to a deceptively complex character. Forbes carries the lion's share of drama in the first two episodes and handles it well, if not completely realistically. Her character, several months pregnant, is put through traumas that would send even the most stoic individual home to rest. Other cast members prove equally promising, with White making a particularly powerful impression in his limited intro as the single dad.

Technical credits are solid, with Ron Fortunato working overtime to create a realistic documentary style, which is enhanced by the deft editing of Dan Lebental. Sets by Michael Boonstra are grim and realistic. Madonna provides the show's theme song.

Dr. Robert Banger .... Ted Levine
Dr. Neil Harrison .... Martin Donovan
Dr. Lyla Garrity ..... Michelle Forbes
Dr. Abe Matthews ..... Billy Burke
Dr. Derrick Hatcher .. Michael Jai White
Heather Miles ........ Joelle Carter
Tammy Banger ......... Patricia Clarkson

Filmed on location in New York by Touchstone Television in association with Imagine Television. Executive producers, Peter Berg, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tony Krantz; co-executive producer, John David Coles; director, writer, Peter Berg; camera, Ron Fortunato; editor, Dan Lebental; music, Craig Wedren; casting Todd Thaler, Joe Blake.

Cancel Check
Why ''Wonderland'' is the latest TV programming miscue. Josh Wolk says the networks should give quality a chance to thrive

Two weeks ago, ''Wonderland'''s second episode crumbled in the ratings against a new episode of ''ER,'' and ABC did what any supportive owner would do: It canceled the show. You have to wonder what ABC execs expected to happen when they pitted the complex, dark series against the No. 1 drama on television. Did the network think it was going to be an instant smash? That's like pitting Verne Troyer against Mike Tyson and being surprised when Troyer's head rolls out of the ring into your lap. 

It defies logic that the networks repeatedly seem surprised when unique shows don't do well instantly, and then panic and axe them posthaste. Why do they produce remotely edgy programming at all? If you're going to be a chicken, do it all the way! Just put on all cheap crap all the time and nobody will miss it when it's gone. But, dear networks, if you're going to attempt to try something different, have the courage of your convictions and give these shows a chance, moving them if need be. 

Last fall, Fox yanked ''Harsh Realm'' after three airings when it suffered on Fridays. The network must have known it was a risky venture -- it was complicated and serialized, so if you came late you might be hopelessly confused -- but went ahead with it anyway, then gave up as soon as the ratings faltered. And while Fox gave its caustically clever  ''Action'' a whopping nine weeks, it was on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m., a time when people are trapped on NBC by Must See TV inertia. Why didn't Fox try pairing it with ''The Simpsons,'' which has an equally smart audience? And ''Freaks and Geeks,'' while getting 11 episodes in two time slots on NBC, was never given the promotion or the chance to appeal to everyone's inner outcast.

I'm not saying television has to be a charity case for quality; shows should be canceled if they've been given a fair air and still can't find an audience. I will miss ''Sports Night,'' but I respect ABC putting it on near-permanent hiatus after nearly two years with no ratings improvement: It's not in the business of making sure an intimate group of Aaron Sorkin fans are kept entertained for life. 

And there are situations where immediate cancelation has its benefits: ''The Mike O'Malley Show'' was killed this fall after 2 episodes, which felt like 46 in bad-show years. And the fact that ''Daddio'' has made it past two airings qualifies as a hate crime against audiences. (But why these shows got on in the first place is a different issue.)

But lame sitcoms aside, the quick slaughter of creatively unconventional shows has to stop, for the networks' good as well as ours. Audiences are going to get tired of the old bait-and-switch as intriguing programs quickly vanish in favor of garbage, and they'll jump to cable for good, leaving the networks feeling joyless and depressed. Maybe then they'll know what it's like to sit through ''Daddio.''

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