Why they call it `the idiot box'

There is nothing wrong with "The TV Set." Do not attempt to adjust the picture. They are controlling transmission. If they wish to make it louder, they will bring up the volume. If they wish to make it softer, they will tune it to a whisper. They can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. They will control the horizontal. They will control the vertical. For an hour and a half, sit quietly and they will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery that reaches from the inner mind to ... the outer limits -- of pilot season.

Set in that strange world from which TV series emerge, Jake Kasdan's wickedly funny comedy follows the travails of a writer guiding his pet project through the Scylla and Charybdis of network television. An insider's guide to a process seemingly rigged to yield lowest-common-denominator programming, "The TV Set" will have you wondering how anything worthwhile ever makes it on the air -- and understand why the best stuff usually winds up on cable.

In general, the movie doesn't necessarily reveal anything we don't already know but delivers it in a personable, entertaining manner that places us inside the conference rooms and editing suites of Studio City (or Burbank or Century City or Culver City ...). Kasdan, a frequent collaborator of comedy maven Judd Apatow -- most significantly on the series "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" -- draws on those experiences to elucidate the saga of Mike Klein, a writer whose proposed series, "The Wexler Chronicles," is vying for a spot in the fall lineup of the fictional network PDN -- a.k.a. "The Panda."

A bearded David Duchovny plays Klein with a carefully modulated blend of intelligence, hope and skepticism. When his manager Alice (a dead-on Judy Greer) suggests that a hirsute actor (Simon Helberg) who is Mike's first choice to play the lead might be "too hip for the room," he asks if that's code for "too Jewish."

Attempting to avoid the wreckage of countless unproduced scripts and unaired pilots, Klein must proceed as diplomatically as possible. Sigourney Weaver costars as Mike's nemesis, a network executive named Lenny who proudly declares that "original scares me a little" and is beholden to the opinions of focus groups and her 14-year-old daughter.