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SOUTHERN EXPOSURE

David Beaird is to network TV right now what Ross Perot was to politics about four months ago, when Perot was the brash, confident outsider.

Beaird, co-producer of the new Fox series ”Key West,” talks about bringing his artistic vision to TV with the same zeal that Perot talked about balancing the budget without breaking a sweat-a phrase Beaird isn`t likely to make considering the heat and humidity in ”Key West,” where the series is being filmed.

”I can`t stress this enough,” the lightly bearded Beaird told the TV critics meeting here recently to preview the new fall season. ”We will very definitely make Dan Quayle hate us.”

That in itself doesn`t set Beaird apart. Throwing down the gauntlet to the vice president has been the favorite pastime of many producers appearing before critics here in the last two weeks.

What makes Beaird different is that he really is an outsider, an uprooted Chicago playwright making his first foray into television-though he has written and directed three movies, most notably ”Scorchers,” starring Faye Dunaway.

You just don`t meet a lot of TV producers out here who are more familiar with the work of Socrates and Bertolt Brecht than they are with Roseanne Arnold and Rob Morrow.

Beaird said he has never seen ”Roseanne”-the series his show is slotted against at 8 p.m. Tuesdays this fall on WFLD-Ch. 32-or ”Northern Exposure,” the hit CBS series that ”Key West” strongly resembles in concept.

”Northern Exposure” is about a young doctor from New York (Morrow) who winds up at one end of North America, in Alaska. ”Key West,” which premieres Oct. 27, is about a young assembly-line worker (Fisher Stevens) from New Jersey who winds up at the other end, in Key West, as a newspaper reporter and Hemingway wannabe.

Like ”Northern Exposure,” ”Key West” offers a cast of oddball characters, among them a blind editor, a loco sheriff, a beloved prostitute, a goofy tavern owner and a Rastafarian.

Series co-producer Dick Berg admitted that ”the success of `Northern Exposure` encouraged Fox to explore that genre”-whatever that ambiguous genre is. The third co-producer, Allan Marcil, is credited with coming up with Key West as the locale.

”Florida is one of the most eccentric places in the universe,” he said, ”and Key West is the most eccentric place in Florida. It`s a place where you can find a muse.”

Even critics intrigued by the premise wondered whether Beaird had found his yet. The seven-minute preview aired for critics was long on jiggling female flesh and short on Socratic dialogue. Call it a bad job of excerpting by the Fox public relations department.

At a lunch after the presentation, Beaird managed to convince critics at his table that ”Key West” will not be an East Coast version of ”Baywatch.” Actually, he said, it`s ” `Baywatch` meets Faust.”

In trying to fathom Beaird`s intentions, it helps to know that the first title for ”Key West” was ”Sex and Politics at the End of the World”-fine for theater playbills, but way too long for TV schedule grids.

Beaird sprinkled his conversation with quotations as casually as he buttered his roll. ”Bertolt Brecht said the primary duty of drama is to entertain. The important duty of drama is to teach.” Beaird intends to do both.

”I have no problem doing a bawdy and raunchy show,” he said.

”Shakespeare did; Moliere did it. I can do it.”

These are not the comments of a man aiming for the lowest common denominator. (Then what about the scene in which an alligator fantasizes about being let loose on a busty blond tied to a stake? I guess quirkiness does not excerpt well.)

Some critics were troubled that the seven-minute preview (of a 60-minute pilot that`s being partly reshot) did not reflect the large gay community in Key West. Again, bad editing.

”The first episode is all about a really good mayor who happens to be gay, and the right-wing element runs him out of town,” Beaird said. ”We`ll be incorporating very positive gay role models in the series. This is a very important principle to me.”

Beaird has already had his first brush, a losing one, with the censors. Fox busybodies ”had a nuclear meltdown” over a scene with two gay men in bed, Beaird said.

”I have a hard time understanding why it`s OK to show millions of people being killed, but you can`t show two men in bed.”

Beaird decided discretion was the better part of valor, especially because the show`s not a hit yet and he has no bargaining power. So he took the scene out. (On the other hand, the Fox fussbudgets left in a scene in which a hooker makes love to a paraplegic woman`s husband while she watches.) Beaird emphasized this is no documentary. He calls his portrayal of Key West ”heightened reality-a state of mind. We`re doing the old Key West. We`re not going to be showing the local K marts and 7-Elevens.”

And don`t look for hydroplaning drug smugglers and explosive ”Miami Vice”-like action. ”We`re trying to stay away from that,” Beaird said.

Most of the filming will be done in the Old Town section, in the vicinity of Sloppy Joe`s bar, Hemingway`s legendary haunt. Filming for months on the narrow streets of a 2-by-4-mile island sounds like a logistical nightmare.

”The natives hated two film crews that came in before,” he said, not naming the movies. ”But I think we`re winning them over.”

So far, Beaird said, ”it feels like we`re making a small art film. We`re going to get some crap from people that we`re making the scripts too dense. I remember `Hill Street Blues` got a lot of that.”

He said, ”We`re reaching out to people who don`t work in TV” to make this TV show, including a number of playwrights whose names Beaird couldn`t put on the record.

Fox executives, hopeful but wary, are watching all this from the sidelines.

”He talks the talk,” a Fox publicist said about Beaird. ”But can he walk the walk?”