DATE: Thursday, July 24, 1997               TAG: 9707240087

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: BONKO IN HOLLYWOOD

SOURCE: LARRY BONKO

DATELINE: PASADENA, CALIF.                  LENGTH:   85 lines

WHY THERE CAN'T BE MORE ``ER'' EPISODES PER SEASON

WOULDN'T IT BE great if there were fewer reruns of ``ER'' on NBC? Wouldn't you love to see 24, 25 or 26 new episodes instead of the measly 22 shows we get now?

I'm here in the TV capital of the western world on a mission: Find out why they can't make more episodes of ``ER.''

It's the show almost everybody likes - more than 40 million of us, anyway. We can't get enough of those dedicated doctors and nurses in their sweaty scrubs who work in an emergency room that's busier than the freeways here.

Why can't there be more than 22 new episodes of ``ER'' every season? Would it help if we begged the producers, if we said, ``Pretty please''?

I'm afraid not. You want to know why there will be just 22 new episodes of ``ER'' next season?

John Wells has the answer.

``Because it would kill us to do more,'' said the executive producer on behalf of the ``ER'' cast and crew. ``Our resources would be stretched too thin if we tried to do more than 22 shows. It's difficult to sustain the high standard of quality in the writing and acting over 22 shows, much less 24 or 26.

``We really couldn't get it going for more than 22,'' Wells said. He said he's lucky to get three days off a year.

When he met with TV writers in town to preview the new season, Wells announced that the Sept. 25 premiere will be done live. Live!

``We expect the episode to have a certain rawness to it,'' the producer said. It won't be an extra show. It will be one of the 22 - and only 22 - scheduled for next season.

In the first year of ``ER,'' the producers delivered 24 new shows to NBC. ``It was then we discovered that with more than 22 episodes, we couldn't do the series as well as we wanted it done. Every year we talk about doing more shows, but every year we have good reasons not to do it,'' Wells said.

Wells and NBC announced that in the future, ``ER'' will not disappear from the Thursday night schedule for weeks at a time, as was the case last spring. That was folly, said Wells.

One reason for not doing more than 22 shows is that some members of the cast - there are 38 speaking parts - go off and do other things. Batman things. It's hard to keep them together for more than 22 episodes.

In just a week here, TV writers ran into three cast members who are working far, far from the emergency room.

First, there's Jerry the admissions clerk who is played by a bear of a man - 6-foot-7, 300-pound Abraham Benrubi. Last season, if you'll remember, Jerry tried to pass himself off as a doctor so he'd earn more for his services at a sperm bank.

Benrubi has joined the cast of ``Sleepwalkers,'' a new Saturday night drama on NBC.

CCH Pounder, who plays chief of surgery Dr. Angela Hicks - she's the one who keeps the highly strung Dr. Benton grounded - is working on an NBC miniseries, ``House of Frankenstein.'' Yvette Freeman - nurse Haleh Adams - co-stars with Fred Savage in a new NBC sitcom, ``Working.''

All three will continue on ``ER.''

Wells and his producer colleagues are generous to their actors, allowing them to work elsewhere while under contract to ``ER.'' Wells said: ``We have a large, talented supporting cast that does not always get the opportunity to work regularly. Because of that, we encourage them to do other things. They are always welcomed back.''

The emergency room on NBC will have two new faces in the 1997-98 season - Maria Bello, who appeared in three episodes last year as a pediatrician, and Alex Kingston, who will play a surgeon from the United Kingdom who's come to Chicago to brush up on trauma medicine.

``They don't get a lot of gunshot wounds in England. It's a sad commentary on our society that trauma surgeons from throughout the world see America as a battlefield on which to learn,'' Wells said.

New to this hand-to-hand combat with death is Kingston.

``We decided that we need another character in the emergency room. That's why Maria is with us,'' said Wells. The new cast members will be what TV producers call ``regulars,'' with their names in the opening credits.

Benrubi is not yet there on ``ER.'' But the work has been steady and the wages good. ``Not good enough to buy a palatial mansion in the hills, but good enough for me to be able to drive a Ford Bronco,'' he said.

Millions know his face but not his name. ``When people see me driving home from work or wherever, they honk and say, `You're the `ER' guy.' They don't shout my name because they don't know what it is. I'm the generic buddy type.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

Anthony Edwards, left, and George Clooney head an ``ER'' cast of 38,

some of whom have parts in other shows as well.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu