Picture this
As the new television season unfolds, we produce our own fantasy list of small-screen shows by big-screen directors.
By Mark Morrison

Don't look now, but Hollywood filmmakers are tackling the small screen in a big way this season: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and their Project Greenlight cronies are producing ABC's innovative "Push, Nevada"; "Ali" director Michael Mann is producing CBS' "Robbery Homicide Division"; "McG," the hip video director who made "Charlie's Angels" a heavenly success at the box office, is behind Fox's sexy "Fastlane"; and blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Top Gun", "Pearl Harbor," "Armageddon") is following up "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" with "CSI: Miami," as well as a new crime drama, "Without a Trace."

Not that the big-to-small-screen switch is a new phenomenon. Mann produced "Miami Vice" in the '80s after making the film "Thief"; "Titanic" director James Cameron produced Fox's "Dark Angel"; director Barry Levinson ("Rain Man," "Bandits") produced NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street" and now honchos HBO's "Oz"; "Men in Black" director Barry Sonnenfeld produced "The Tick" for Fox; and even Steven Spielberg has done TV ("seaQuest DSV," "Amazing Stories"). Still, some filmmakers remain television holdouts. We can only imagine what kind of shows they might create:

Woody Allen
Death and Women
In this one-camera black-and-white dramedy, Paul Reiser plays an obsessive-compulsive Jewish comedy writer who thinks he's dying and travels the New York metropolitan area seeking closure with every woman he's ever known -- including his estranged wife (Tiffani Thiessen), his ex-wives (Mariel Hemingway, Juliette Lewis and, in a special "sweeps" episode, Helen Hunt), his sisters (Julie Kavner, Julie Hagerty, Carol Kane), his daughter (Soleil Moon Frye), his mother (Olympia Dukakis) and his first love, the YMHA day-camp counselor who taught him to swim (Barbara Hershey).

Cameron Crowe
You Complete Me
Scott Wolf and Jennifer Love Hewitt assume the screen roles played by Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger in this continuation of the "Jerry Maguire" saga. Reprising his unforgettable movie performance, 11-year-old Jonathan Lipnicki plays their still-cute son. It's six months later, and loudmouthed Rod has retired at the top of his game and moved to Alaska to become the only black former football player who runs a team of snow dogs. Deserted by his top client and convinced that he never loved Dorothy, Jerry is about to throw in the towel when he remembers that her kid can really throw a ball. Under the watchful eye of Dorothy's sister (Bonnie Hunt reprising her role if her new series on ABC, "Life With Bonnie," doesn't make it), Jerry starts over again by molding this raw talent. He realizes that the only way to build a client roster is to get them while they're young, so he begins scouting every Little League and Pee Wee football team in America.

Spike Lee
Color Blind
This sitcom is about a hotheaded Italian-American divorced single mother of three girls (Annabella Sciorra) who marries a nightclub comic with three sons (Steve Harvey) and is determined to make a go of it no matter what their best friends (Debi Mazar, Doug E. Doug) tell them. They move into a renovated brownstone in Harlem with a wisecracking housekeeper (Rosie Perez) and his mother (Ruby Dee), who is blind and doesn't know her son's new wife is white -- a secret they decide to keep. Unbeknownst to them, Mom has a secret of her own: a child she gave up for adoption before she was married (guest star Danny Aiello in the first-season cliffhanger).

Quentin Tarantino
Welcome Back, Vinnie
This one-hour high school drama stars John Travolta in a reprise of his Vinnie Barbarino character from "Welcome Back, Kotter." But Vinnie is now the one returning home to teach -- shop class, no less -- only to find that the new generation of sweathogs has replaced spitballs and insults with guns, knives and syringes. He's shocked to discover they're now putting more than rubber hoses up their noses. Rosanna Arquette plays his wife, Talia Barbarino. And Samuel L. Jackson has a recurring role as Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington, who now owns the local diner.

Martin Scorsese
Mia Famiglia
Harvey Keitel plays the successful owner of two liquor stores, in Lower Manhattan and New Jersey, who has made it the old-fashioned way -- hard work and "family connections" -- in this sitcom about the ties that bind. Now, he wants to teach the business to his two spoiled daughters (Domenica Scorsese and Drena De Niro) so he can retire to Miami in five years. The thing is, they each had different mothers (Cathy Moriarty and Lynn Whitfield), grew up in different homes and hate each other.

Kenya Hunt is a New York writer who has danced professionally.