So does Bette.

        “I have no help! What kind of star am I?” says the Grammy-winner who plays herself in the first-year comedy.

Bette Midler

        “I have no housekeeper. I have no driver. I have no hairdresser. I have no makeup person. I don't have anybody!”

        Soon Ms. Midler will be hiring some help. She told members of the Television Critics Association during a set visit that she has spent Christmas vacation brainstorming with her writers about ways to salvage this lagging sitcom after the departure of Roy, her TV husband (Kevin Dunn).

        “I think it will find its way in the next six weeks,” she predicts while seated in a director's chair in the kitchen patterned on the one in her home. She has a similar O'Keefe & Merritt gas range, Viking professional stainless steel refrigerator and a double aluminum industrial sink.

        “I want more comic actors around me. I want a bigger ensemble,” says Ms. Midler, who won a People's Choice Award Jan. 7 for favorite female performer in a new TV series. “We need more and funnier characters. We need a true ensemble.”

        Bette has been a work in progress since its October debut. The first change was spreading around the workload so Ms. Midler didn't have to carry every scene. They cut out the celebrity guest stars (who were a pain to book) and dropped the song and dance routines.

        She also had trouble adjusting to the patter of a sitcom, and pausing for the studio audience laughter. “I've been a solo for 30 years. People don't talk to me (in her act),” she says.

        The weekly TV grind was “absolutely brutal,” she says. “I'd never encountered such a pace before. They keep giving you new material until the lights go out (on taping night) . . . I was having a very hard time.”

        That's why an exhausted Ms. Midler told David Letterman on his Late Show after Thanksgiving that starring in a sitcom was “the lowest thing that ever happened to me in my life.” She described the process of making the show “like a dung beetle pushing this ball of dung up a mountain.”

        Mr. Dunn, the veteran movie actor, was let out of his long-term contract because he was frustrated at playing Ms. Midler's straight man. “He was very unhappy with the material. It just wasn't his cup of tea,” she says.

        Although she wants a man around the house, Ms. Midler will be “very timid about getting involved with another actor. We're not sure what we need in this role. I want to make sure I know what I'm doing this time.”

        TV executives and producers have listed the options — quickly swap actors for Roy like they did for Darrin in Bewitched; have an unseen Roy communicate with his wife by e-mail, fax, phone or letters; or have Mr. Dunn return and request a divorce.

        “In this world of television, people really take this seriously . . . which I think is hilarious,” she says with a laugh.

        But the Divine Miss M. has proposed another option — having a guest star play Roy every week, sort of like the different Murphy Brown secretary each episode. One week it could be Fred Willard, or Martin Short or Chris Rock.

        “I think it's a funny idea. I think it's a great idea,” she says.

        But CBS executives aren't amused at her husband-o-rama scheme.

        Says CBS Entertainment President Nancy Tellem: “Frankly, I'd like a different husband every week, but, you know, we're trying to make the series as realistic as we can, and we are currently looking to cast a husband. And I think we're going to end up with only one.”

        Ms. Midler's fans want her to fix the show, according to David Poltrack, CBS' head of research.

        “They basically say Bette deserves better,” Mr. Poltrack says. “They absolutely love her, but they'd rather see more of the real Bette. They think Bette is too broad, too silly.”

        Her fans probably don't agree with Ms. Midler's assessment that the show deserves “a high B minus” so far. (She always has been over the top.)

        “I could say it's a "C,' edging toward a "B plus.' I want to get it to an "A minus' by the end of the season,” she says.

        If she gets some help, maybe more people will tune in — unlike the first two months of the TV season.

        “I was on the air for six weeks, and it was as if I had died,” she says. “It was like I was invisible. Nobody recognized me. Nobody spoke my name. Nobody came up to me and said, "I like your show. . . .' The first six weeks were very painful.”
       John Kiesewetter is reporting from the winter TV press tour. E-mail: jkiesewetter@enquirer.com.)
       

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