David Mamet brings skills to ‘The Unit’

updated 4:59 p.m. ET March 1, 2006

LOS ANGELES - The unit behind CBS’ new military drama “The Unit” represents one of the more impressive gatherings in the name of television.

Filmmaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) is an executive producer and is writing or directing some of the 13 episodes. Shawn Ryan, creator of FX’s Emmy-winning “The Shield,” also enlisted as an executive producer.

Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Haney, whose “Inside Delta Force” details his years in counterterrorism and covert operations, serves as adviser to the series that his 2002 book inspired.

But, according to Haney, all that creative and ex-Army firepower wasn’t what drew CBS chief executive Les Moonves to the drama about Special Forces operatives at work and at home, where their families cope with a life of secrecy.

“Had you come in here with only an action series, I would have passed. But when you said the wives, the sweethearts, that depth of humanity, that’s when you had me,” Haney recalled Moonves saying after a successful pitch meeting.

Wags have dubbed the series “Desperate Housewives Meet G.I Joe.” The quip draws a measured response from Mamet.

“Maybe. It gets pretty desperate on both sides,” he said.

Dennis Haysbert (“24”) stars as Jonas Blane, respected leader of the unit that includes a recruit played by Scott Foley (“Felicity”) and Robert Patrick’s (“Walk the Line”) Col. Tom Ryan. Holding down the homefront are Regina Taylor, Abby Brammell and Audrey Marie Anderson.

In “The Unit,” perilous missions are mixed with domestic dangers that include an extramarital affair, adolescent angst and wives who resent the camouflage needed to protect their husbands and the national interest.

Born out of rum-drinking sessions
The series, debuting 9 p.m. ET Tuesday, deliberately avoids identifying the unit as Delta Force to keep its dramatic options open and, Haney said, to limit the carping he expects from ex-colleagues over whether every detail is true to life.

“The Unit” draws heavily on Haney’s experiences, both from the book and from memory — with sensitive information omitted, he said.

“David and I drink a lot of rum together and I tell stories,” said Haney, 53, who spent a decade running an international security firm after retiring from the Army in 1990. He spent his last four military years in Panama, which included combat duty.

Cable newshounds may remember him as a terrorism expert who popped up regularly on CNN and Fox News Channel.

Haney met Mamet while serving as a consultant for Mamet’s 2004 film “Spartan.” They bonded, and Haney shared his vision of seeing his book brought to the screen — the small screen. Film offers were being dangled but he wasn’t buying.

“I was stiff-arming that because in my grand naiveté — never underestimate the power of ignorance — I said, ‘I want a television series because it tells the story more fully about this world and this life.”’

When Mamet brought in TV-savvy Ryan to help navigate the industry (the series was rejected by two networks before CBS said yes), the writers knew Haney was adamant about avoiding a cliched view of the military.

“One of my purposes for writing the book is I was so disgusted with the normal Hollywood portrayal,” Haney said. “It was cartoonish, one-dimensional. It’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone film portrayals of this Neanderthal-like person who speaks in monosyllables and slaughters the whole world and there’s no repercussions, there’s no cost involved.”

In “The Unit,” he said, the intent is to explore “the life and death moral issues and the gray area, because there’s where this world lives, in the gray area and the shadows.”

Mamet, who doesn’t watch much TV these days but speaks fondly of oldie faves “Gunsmoke” and “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” (he got a boxed set of the latter as a gift from his sister), doesn’t consider himself slumming in the medium.

He’s directed a couple of shows before — it was his work on an episode of Ryan’s “The Shield” that brought the two together — and created pilots for series that didn’t make it to air.

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