Do-overs common between pilot and premiere

Putting together a great television series often involves a lot of tinkering before the premiere. Even more often, a lousy series will be rejiggered any number of ways - recasting, adding a laugh track, rewriting, changing the tone, etc., before it airs. And even then, it may still be lousy.

But countless high-quality series first had to get the ingredients right, whether it was another actor or just a change in tone. It's just the nature of television - few series pop on your screen fully formed. But viewers are often in the dark about this tinkering. So here's a rundown of changes either made or soon to be made on shows you'll see in the fall. Will the changes work? Well, you can be the judge when you see them.

"$#*! My Dad Says," CBS. Based on the Twitter sensation, it stars William Shatner. The producers swapped out the son. And made some story changes. "We wanted the best fit possible, and (the fired actor) is great. He's a really good guy," said producer David Kohan.

"He's a really fine actor. He's a really funny guy, but it didn't feel like the right fit to all of us involved, and we thought that was what we had to do to make the first impression the best it could possibly be."

After being pressed about other changes (the buzz is bad on this one), producer Max Mutchnick offered this up: "We're streamlining the first paths of the pilot, and this love story that we had threaded into the first pilot, we've taken out because we saw that there was so much fun in just writing this buddy-buddy comedy." Translation: We're redoing it.

"Outsourced," NBC. This series about an American company that outsources its call center to India is getting noticed, but not for the right reasons. There have been suggestions that the comedy is borderline racist and overly stereotypical. Changes? Not in tone, the producers say.

But they did swap out one hot blond actress for a hotter blond actress (she's a minor character). And they will shoot exterior shots of Mumbai. But the producers have never been to Mumbai, nor an actual call center.

"Detroit 1-8-7," ABC. This gritty cop drama set in Detroit used extensive documentary-style footage and had the actors break the fourth wall and talk right into the camera.

The show scrapped the format after Detroit banned any film crews from following police around in the wake of a young girl being killed recently (while a crew from a reality show followed the police around).

The ban allowed the producers to realize that their entire conceptual look was perhaps ill-conceived.

"Creatively, at the end of the day, we are all convinced - and this is after going through the pilot and looking at the pilot," said producer David Zabel, "that in the ongoing series, in the long run, we were actually going to feel a little hampered by that and hemmed in, and it certainly was going to limit the ability that we had to sort of send characters into different directions and explore different character arcs and emotional lives and what the actors were going to be able to do."

"Lone Star," Fox. This series about a con man married to two people is probably generating the most chatter of any broadcast show.

What's unique is that the complicated nature is not being revamped or tinkered with by Fox. Which prompted its creator, Kyle Killen, to admit he has doubts: "I have no idea if this was a good idea for a network show, but I feel like they're willing to find out with the boldest, craziest version of it.

"If it's a failure, I think it's going to be a spectacular failure, and I like that idea."

"Running Wilde," Fox. Billed as a romantic comedy starring Will Arnett and Keri Russell, the sitcom raised its profile substantially with a hilarious press tour panel featuring the cast and creator Mitch Hurwitz ("Arrested Development") where they addressed concerns about the pilot.

"We are still reshooting the pilot," Hurwitz said. "We're going to go off and reshoot about half the pilot because of some very insightful comments that (Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly) made and some recasting and things like that."

Among those: A better backstory for Russell's character, one that humanizes her more; recasting a supporting character to Arnett; dropping another character entirely and changing the role from female to male; the addition of David Cross, another "Arrested Development" alum; moving the location from Beverly Hills (shot in Vancouver) to New York (shot there, apparently).

"They're subtle shifts," Hurwitz said, "but in total, hopefully it will make the pilot easier to connect with."

E-mail Tim Goodman at tgoodman@sfchronicle.com. Follow him at www.twitter.com/bastardmachine.

This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle