That Dilbert Sensibility

“Dilbert” is the fastest-growing comic strip in syndication, read by more than 150 million people in 57 countries. The satire of corporate America has inspired a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, tons of merchandising and three best-sellling books. So it was only a matter of time before the bespectacled Everyman of the workplace came to television.

In fact, as his creator Scott Adams points out, “as soon as a comic strip becomes popular, they think of obvious things to do with it.” In this case, it was turning the three-panel newspaper “Dilbert” into the walking, talking lead of a prime-time animated series.

Premiering Monday on UPN, the half-hour comedy stars the voice of Daniel Stern as the lowly cubicle-dwelling engineer. His workday world is populated with a cast of moronic colleagues including the self-absorbed Wally (Gordon Hunt), the temperamental, caffeine freak Alice (Kathy Griffin) and his horrific Pointy--Haired Boss (Larry Miller).

Home provides no solace either. As the series opens, Dilbert’s acerbic pooch, Dogbert, (Chris Elliott), has created his own management consultant business and taken on Dilbert’s company as a client. Long term, Dogbert give you the impression he intends to rule the world.

The UPN series isn’t the first attempt to bring “Dilbert” to the small screen. Two years ago, Adams had worked with Fox to develop a live-action “Dilbert” comedy. But they couldn’t quite make the concept work. “The pilot was shot, but it was never aired,” says Adams. “It wasn’t quite up to expectations.”

But the cartoonist wasn’t discouraged by the Fox fiasco. In fact, he readily admits he almost likes failure. “It means that I am one step closer to knowing what will work because I eliminated one possibility,” he says. “I always feel I get smarter when I fail.”

After the Fox pilot flopped, Adams was just waiting for the opportunity to get the “right combination of people in a room who would say, ‘Not only do I want to do it, but I want to do it right now.’ Then the big task was finding Larry Charles.”

The Emmy Award-winning writer-producer, who previously worked on “Seinfeld” and “Mad About You,” and Adams were brought together by Jeff Sagansky, then head of Columbia TriStar Television. The two discovered their sensibilities were very compatible.

“Though we are very different people in many ways, we had a lot of overlap in our interests,” says Charles. “We just immediately found a level to communicate on. As we were talking about stuff, we got very excited and started to have this mutual vision of the show.”

Charles had a cursory knowledge of “Dilbert,” which he viewed as primarily an observational and office-based strip. But after reading Adams’ best-selling “Dilbert” books, Charles changed his mind.

“[Dilbert] is a microcosm of just a much larger sort of environment,” says Charles. “[Adams] is dealing with very big questions of philosophy and metaphysics. It’s very surreal and has this kind of otherworldly quality to it. All great literature works on more than one level.”

Adams and Charles ended up going with UPN, even though at the moment it is the least watched of the networks and still struggling to establish itself. Why? Because president Dean Valentine gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse: 13 episodes guaranteed to air.

“It’s just the matter of clicking a button to get UPN and people will find it,” says Charles. “We are being allowed to let the show evolve on the air, which is a great benefit.”

Both creators say it was a challenge transforming a three-panel daily strip into a 22-minute weekly episode.

“All of my instincts are taking complicated things and boiling them into three sentences,” says Adams. “When your brain is oriented that way, it’s really hard to shake yourself out of that. But then you learn that there are just more topics that you can really develop if you have more space.”

Adams also has discovered an extra freedom in doing the series because he is working with experienced animators.

“I am not bound by the things that I can’t draw,” he says. “If you look through the ‘Dilbert’ books, see how many crowd scenes you’ll find. Not a lot.”

Finding the right animators was easier than finding the right voices to bring his characters to life, says Adams. “They have to sound like they come out of that body,” he says.

The decision this time to animate “Dilbert” rather than try the live-action approach again opens up the possibilities, according to Adams.

“The beauty of animation is that you can break the physical realities,” says Adams. “I can have a company wiping out a town and I don’t have to deal with the consequences. You’ll see a lot of mutants and aliens and other things in subsequent episodes.”

Charles adds that the series is also going to explore “time and space and dimensions and their connection to man’s fate.

“It’s very much connected to Charlie Chaplin in ‘Modern Times.’ It’s very Kafkaesque,” says Charles. “It’s about logical man in an illogical world and that covers a lot of ground. There are a lot of things in the world that doesn’t make sense.”

“Dilbert” premieres Monday at 8 p.m. on UPN. The premiere episode is rated PG.