Showtime sees the humor in cancer with the 'The Big C'

Laura Linney as Cathy and Gabourey Sidibe as Andrea in... — Laura Linney as Cathy and Gabourey Sidibe as Andrea in "The Big C." Credit: Showtime Photo

By DIANE WERTSSpecial to NewsdayAugust 12, 2010

It's not quite as inviting a what-if question as the ever-popular "What would I do if I won the lottery?"

But it's a whole lot more crucial to the way you'd live your life.

And it's a whole lot more likely to happen.

"What would you do if you have two to three years left to live?"

The person speaking is comedy writer Jenny Bicks, who has previously kept us amused with her scripts for "Sex and the City" and "Men in Trees." Now she's running Showtime's much-anticipated half-hour series "The Big C" (premiering Monday night at 10:30 after the season return of "Weeds").

Let's just say the title's C doesn't stand for car, cash, computer, college or even children.

Terminal diagnosis

Oscar nominee and Emmy honoree Laura Linney (who won for HBO's "John Adams" and NBC's "Frasier") stars as a demure suburban teacher, whose diagnosis of terminal cancer turns her life upside down, as it dramatically - which means comedically - shifts the balance of power in her relationships.

She doesn't share her diagnosis with her goofy arrested-adolescence husband (Oliver Platt), as he badgers to be let back into the house she had recently kicked him out of. She doesn't tell the obnoxious teenage son (Gabriel Basso) to whom she starts reading the riot act, or a snotty student she surprisingly makes her sidekick ("Precious" Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe), or her artsy homeless brother (John Benjamin Hickey) who sees being a bum as a lifestyle statement.

Yet "The Big C" isn't an ugly-duckling story or a repression-busting switcheroo like Olivia Newton-John at the end of "Grease." Nope, Bicks says. "The truth is, she may want to change, but what'll happen is she'll go two steps forward and one step back. Cathy" - and yes, Linney plays Cathy with a C - "is still Cathy. She might go to more extreme places. But she's still her."

Or at least the alter ego of the "good" girl she used to be. Acting out in couples therapy and cancer-support groups, burning furniture in the backyard pit where she'd started to build a swimming pool, informing restaurant waiters "I'm just having desserts and liquor" - Cathy shirks off lifelong inhibitions, approaching what's left of her life with a twisted sense of humor.

For Showtime, Linney's impulsive Cathy joins Edie Falco's pill-popping adulterer in "Nurse Jackie," Mary-

Louise Parker's pot-dealing mom in "Weeds" and Toni Collette's multiple personalities in "The United States of Tara" among a gallery of "strong subversive lead characters who happen to be women," says Showtime president and CEO Matt Blank. These otherwise ordinary females are the polar opposite of premium competitor HBO's leads, mostly exceptional men, from "Oz," "The Sopranos" and "Deadwood" to "Entourage" and "Hung."

"Nobody said, let's do all these shows with these female leads in these socially disruptive roles," Blank says in a phone interview. "It just worked out that it happened to be that."

But it does carve a distinct series identity for Showtime in a new premium-cable world where feature film importance has plummeted with their ubiquitous availability on DVD, iTunes and other sources. While Showtime was the first cable network to break molds with prime-time series back in the '80s-'90s - the gay-character bar comedy "Brothers," the fourth-wall buster "It's Garry Shandling's Show" - the mojo moved to HBO 10 years ago with "The Sopranos" (1999) and "Six Feet Under" (2001).

Then in 2003, Showtime hired as its programming chief Bob Greenblatt, one of the producers who developed "Six Feet Under," and the tables began turning. Spunky series like "Weeds" (2005) and "Dexter" (2006) hijacked back the premium cable buzz.

Showtime's subscriber base climbed by 50 percent during Greenblatt's 2003-2010 tenure, from 12.2 million to 18.2 million, and its public profile multiplied exponentially. Collette won the comedy lead Emmy for "Tara" last year, and nominations regularly honor others like Mary-

Louise Parker of "Weeds" and Michael C. Hall for "Dexter." Blank says, "These shows brand our network."

Which is why Showtime is not afraid of a comedy about which any headline will include a word that, until recent decades, was barely spoken in public amid rampant fear of the disease. Bicks understands the impact of "The Big C" better than most, having had breast cancer a decade back.

"I bought a Porsche, I took more trips. I decided to try to be a better person and try to meditate. And it didn't stick," Bicks says in a phone interview. "But I got a slightly better hold on what makes me happy."

Linchpin scenes

"The Big C" is defined by linchpin scenes where it's unclear from Linney's expressions whether she's laughing or crying.

"Life itself can be highly comedic in the old sense of the word," Bicks says, meaning the sense of Shakespeare. "When you say comedy now, people think 'sitcom,' big jokes, laugh track and goofy. But it's absurd life moments, when you come up against something that's really life-changing. A disease like cancer. Divorce. Death. In the midst of the dark craziness, there's that fine line of 'How is this happening?' and there's taking risks and taking chances."

In other words, this comedy about living with cancer isn't a comedy about cancer at all. It's a comedy about living.

So many of our fave TV characters had cancer

Cancer first hit prime-time awareness in one of the medium's most groundbreaking series. CBS' issue-oriented sitcom "All in the Family" broached the previously verboten topic in its 1973 Christmas episode, when Jean Stapleton's "dingbat" Edith worried about finding a lump in her breast. Since then, the "C" word has become a more common story element. Cancer was diagnosed in these 20 main characters and many others:

St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982) - Dr. Auschlander (Norman Lloyd) and Nurse Rosenthal (Christina Pickles)

Cagney & Lacey (CBS, 1985) - Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly)

thirtysomething (ABC, 1990) - Nancy (Patricia Wettig)

Sisters (NBC, 1993) - Alex (Swoosie Kurtz)

Murphy Brown (CBS, 1997) - Murphy (Candice Bergen)

NYPD Blue (ABC, 1998) - Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz)

The Sopranos (HBO, 2001) - Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese)

ER (NBC, 2002) - Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards)

Sex and the City (HBO, 2003) - Samantha (Kim Cattrall)

Battlestar Galactica (Syfy, 2003) - Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell)

The L Word (Showtime, 2006) - Dana Fairbanks (Erin Daniels)

Desperate Housewives (ABC, 2007) - Lynette (Felicity Huffman)