Ellen Gray: Riding the sitcom express: 'Are We There Yet?,' new on TBS, is shot at a frantic pace

ARE WE THERE YET? 9 and 9:30 p.m. tomorrow, TBS.

SOME OF THE LAUGHS may be cheap, but there's nothing inexpensive about the typical TV sitcom, where actors, writers and crews work under a system that, except for rising salaries, hasn't changed all that much since the days when most of us had only three channels to choose from.

Audiences, and the advertising revenue they attracted, may have been large enough then to keep the money machine going, but in the age of cable and DVRs, we've seen scripted jokes squeezed out by shows where the joke's literally on us, if only because focusing on so-called "real people" costs so much less.

So three years ago, when Tyler Perry's "House of Payne" premiered on TBS after a 10-episode test run in several cities - including Philadelphia - the previous summer, it really did look like a different animal.

Shot in the actor/playwright/filmmaker's Atlanta studio at a lightning-fast pace, "Payne" was initially picked up for an unheard-of 100 episodes, rather than the usual six or nine, and followed in 2009 by another Perry series, "Meet the Browns," which used a similar model and quickly became a hit for the cable network.

Atlanta's a long way from Hollywood, but someone must have been paying attention, because tomorrow night TBS rolls out "Are We There Yet?" - a new sitcom spun off the Ice Cube movie that's taking the Perry playbook and using it with people accustomed to working under the more traditional system.

Terry Crews ("Everybody Hates Chris") and Essence Atkins ("Half & Half," "Smart Guy") star as Nick and Suzanne, newlyweds raising Suzanne's two children in a series whose 10-episode order carries an option for 90 more.

Ali LeRoi, the Emmy-winning writer who oversaw "Everybody Hates Chris," is running the show, and Ice Cube's another of the executive producers as well as an occasional player.

Crews and Atkins, in Philadelphia last week as part of a multi-city tour to promote the show, talked about what it's like to make an episode in about a day and a half instead of the usual five days.

"Oh, it's baptism by fire," Atkins said. "You can't mess around. The margin of error is very small. You know, it's something that it really takes a lot of energy, a lot of focus and you can't do it haphazardly, because there's no way to turn out that much product with people who don't know what they're doing."

"The way we're trying to do it, you have to be pretty efficient, and to keep the quality up, that was the big thing," said Crews, who noted that on the single-camera show "Chris" - where he played the young Chris Rock's father, Julius - it was "like a little movie and it takes much longer."

On a show like "Are We There Now?" with four cameras filming at once, "you can get a lot more done," he said.

Not that either of them is complaining.

"A lot of actors wouldn't want to work this hard," Crews said. "But we understand that this is also the future of television."

A future that's being made in a studio in, of all places, Stamford, Conn.

Not Atlanta, where Perry and Turner-owned TBS are both based?

"We're very, very separate from the Tyler Perry machine. It's only Terry Perry in the way he broke the mold" in how to produce sitcoms, he said.

"We wouldn't be here without Tyler," Atkins said. "He has built a brand, and his fan base, they like what he does. They absolutely are loyal to his brand of comedy and his brand of things. . . . We respect that."

But "what we've done here, we've brought on veterans. We've brought on people, who in the realm of sitcom and in the realm of comedy are very well-respected and have done numerous shows and numerous projects," she said.

As for what's sacrificed under this model, Atkins, whose TV career began with an appearance on "The Cosby Show," said she can't see that anything has been, not even in the marketing.

"I've done eight pilots and I've had five shows go to series. So . . . I'm very comfortable on this ride. I've done it before."

Both actors said they're also comfortable in their roles.

On "Chris," "I channeled my father" to play Julius, said Crews. On "Are We There Yet?" "this character's me. Because it's set in the now. I am perpetually 13 years old."

Two decades ago, he, too, married a single mother (with whom he's had four more kids). "I met [Rebecca] when the baby was 6 months old. We were married when the baby was 2 years old. So the thing is that you know my wife loved me, but the baby didn't."

"I'm a newlywed," said Atkins, "so, much like Suzanne, I'm learning the whole process of beyond the happily ever after. Suzanne and Nick have been married six months. In my life, I've been married seven."

"Can I tell you? In the good old days of TV, I wouldn't have been on television," said Crews.

"There was one John Amos," he said. "I could've been the John Amos, but I could've lost out on that part and I would've had to wait for the next Norman Lear project that happened to hit. Now, I have my own reality show on BET ['The Family Crews']. Now I have this thing on TBS. . . . We're going to be on TV for the next five years, as we do this. They're not going to play the 90 in six months. It's about staying in the game."

"And remaining employed," added Atkins. "I have friends who work on the other side of the camera. And they're - excuse my lack of sophistication - they're bitching and moaning about how things are not the way they used to be. 'They're not paying me the rate they used to pay me, they're not flying me first-class,' and these are, you know, hair and makeup people.

"I had a very frank conversation with one of my friends. I said, 'Understand. I'm working three times as hard to make the money I used to make very leisurely.'

"I said, 'So that is over. You need to adjust your thinking in how you are going to make money and the kind of money you can command. It's just not that way anymore. The economics in the world are different.' And I think that we're so spoiled. . . . It fosters entitlement, this position that we're in, you know. And you can get very spoiled and you can start to feel that this is the norm and this is how things should be done, but, you know, it doesn't make sense from a business model to keep doing that with actors or anyone else. It just doesn't make sense." *

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