Dear Diaries

A college show busting at the seams with handsome leading men and sultry leading women; a sexed-up setup; and the creative team that brought us the magnificent Homicide: Life on the Street—it all sounded pretty peachy for The Bedford Diaries. But then the WB and UPN announced their merger, and suddenly the upcoming WB show sounded a lot less like a sure bet.

“We were shocked,” says Julie Martin, one of Bedford’s creators and executive producers. “We knew the WB was having some problems…but we never dreamed it was going out of business.”

But the WB is going out of business. Come fall, the two failing netlets will join forces as the CW, where a combination of WB and UPN shows will air alongside new content. The CW hasn’t released a schedule, but America’s Next Top Model, Gilmore Girls, Beauty and the Geek, Smallville and Everybody Hates Chris are presumed safe. “There’s more shows competing for fewer hours,” Martin says. “Now it’s even more of an uphill battle.”

The Bedford Diaries better strap on some climbing shoes, because the hill, she is steep. The soapy drama stars Matthew Modine (seriously) as the popular professor of a provocative human-sexuality class at a fictional liberal-arts college in Manhattan. The students in the class record video diaries—attention! convenient dramatic device!—in which they rattle off predictable monologues of their largely unimpressive sexcapades. Some of the acting from the students is spotty, but Milo Ventimiglia (Jess on Gilmore Girls) is perfect as the brooding jackass Richard. Even he’s hedging his bets, though, and is already attached to another pilot in case Bedford crashes.

Anyone expecting a Homicide-style character drama is shit out of luck, even though Bedford was created and produced by Martin and Tom Fontana, of Homicide, Oz and St. Elsewhere fame. “Homicide explored how a whole unit functions, and this explores how a whole college functions, from the administration to professors to students. They’re both a focused look at a really insular world,” Martin says. The similarities end there. The first episode of Bedford is more reminiscent of a really meaty episode of early Dawson’s Creek, and we mean that in a good way. Every scene is sexually charged, even if most plotlines are a little too telegraphed, and it’s not about characters so much as archetypes. But holy smokes, can we not wait for the next episode.

The content of Bedford is, of course, sexual, and Martin says dealing with network censors hasn’t been easy. “They wouldn’t let us say masturbation. I know we can’t say fuck or blow job, but I was surprised that they were so cautious about orgasm.” Eventually, Martin says, producers and censors reached a middle ground, but, “We did make some compromises we weren’t thrilled to make.”

“For me, it’s the first time I got a ‘created by’ [credit],” Martin says. “Great, I got a show on the air! But…the network’s going out of business. Talk about not being able to catch a break.” The show’s 8pm Wednesday time slot won’t help matters, either: Between megahits Lost and American Idol, moderate success Criminal Minds and the teen-market competition Veronica Mars, Wednesdays are crowded.

According to Martin, the WB has decided to promote its other hour-long midseason show, Pepper Dennis, rather than throw much support behind Bedford. “Do we feel like Cinderella, the abandoned stepchild? A little bit.”

The Bedford Diaries premieres Wednesday 29 at 8pm on the WB.