What if the producers of the current television series “Lost” had said during pilot season, “We love the story, but can we do it without the plane crash?”  Crazy, right?  Because the plane crash is what sets the whole show in motion. 

This is essentially what happens to writer Mike Klein, whose script for a “drama with comic overtones” has network executives all excited in “The TV Set.”  Then the top exec says, “Can we do it without the suicide?”  The suicide in question is the premise of “The Wexler Chronicles,” which Mike based on his own brother’s suicide and how it affected him.  So it’s personal as well as professional. 

Writer/director Jake Kasdan (“Zero Effect,” “Orange County”) is squarely in his comfort zone with this very funny and smart treatise on the television industry.  Having grown up in Hollywood (his father is writer/director Lawrence Kasdan) and worked in both television and feature films, he has an insider’s view of the ongoing art vs. commerce quandary, and he sends it up here with the help of an inspired cast. 

Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of Lenny, the woman in charge of programming at the fictional Panda network, is pure parody (or is it?) — she’s flighty but firm, phony but 100-percent pleasant, dumb but smart — and she gets the best lines.  During the casting process, she makes these observations: “She doesn’t let her cuteness get in the way of her hotness,” and “You can’t hang a series on a theater actor with bad hair and a beard.”  And when someone congratulates her on the success of the network’s top reality series, she quips, “If you can’t sell 14 sluts in the Caribbean, you’ve got problems.” 

Funny thing is, everything Lenny says turns out to be true.  All the ludicrous suggestions she makes regarding “The Wexler Chronicles” dumbs down the original intent, but in the end the show gets “picked up” for the new season, which is everybody’s goal. 

David Duchovny brings a quiet intelligence to his role as the frustrated Mike, who’s caught between creative integrity and practicality — he has a mortgage, a pregnant wife and a bad back to consider.  Ioan Gruffudd is charmingly earnest as a former BBC executive whose sympathies lie with Mike but whose so-savvy-you-don’t-know-he’s-manipulative manner allows him to ease Mike’s mind and still change the plan all in one phone conversation. 

Kasdan wisely doesn’t make this about the big, bad bosses vs. the creative geniuses who won’t compromise.  It’s a well-balanced look at a process that, from the outside, seems arbitrary and convoluted, but from the inside makes sense — no matter how maddening it is for those caught in the middle. 

There’s a funny sequence in the film where poll-takers ask random people on the street if they’d watch certain TV shows — based solely on hearing the titles.  It offers insight as to how we as viewers are just as responsible for some of the dreck that ends up in our own living rooms.  It’s tragic that shows called “Slut Wars” and “The World’s Grossest Meals” could make it onto a network’s prime-time schedule as they do in “The TV Set,” but the reality is that many of us would tune in.  Ha ha, joke’s on us. 

As Mike says in the film, “It’s tragic; that’s why it’s funny.” 

The TV Set ★★★1/2

Starring: David Duchovny, Sigourney Weaver and Ioan Gruffudd

Director: Jake Kasdan

Rated: R for language