Making It

Two best friends form a scruffy love triangle, falling for the same woman at the dawn of the television age in this earnest fictional debut by a former producer/director for Goodson-Todman Productions (the game-show folks). The ambitious threesome include the unnamed narrator, the scion of a struggling, unhappy family; Peter, his rich, confident best friend; and Barbara, the beautiful and pragmatic actress the two men love. The novel charts their comings-of-age, big breaks, crises and changes of fortune from the comradely collaborations of their early years in the TV industry to the divisiveness of the McCarthy era. Barbara and Peter marry, and the trio form a production company, but the entire enterprise is threatened when Barbara and the narrator strike up an affair. As the trio move from successful pitch to successful show, a certain monotony sets in, cooling their zeal for the conflicts and triumphs of showbiz. The author's enthusiasm for his subject is always apparent, but readers may find the blow-by-blow documentation of life in the fast lane tedious. While some scenes will be of interest to early-TV buffs (readers accustomed to stratospheric Seinfeldian salaries will be amused to learn how little it cost to put on a TV show in the '40s), others will find themselves deterred by the wealth of extraneous details, inept narrative control and distractingly unrealistic dialogue. This nostalgic work has the dated feel of a black-and-white program without the redeeming star quality. (Oct.)