The wizard of Oz, HBO's gruesome drama about a maximum-security penitentiary, Fontana now turns to The Jury, a Fox midseason series. It looks at criminal cases from a jury's point of view.

Production began last week on five hour-long episodes. No debut date. Fontana homeys Barry Levinson and James Yoshimura are coproducers.

New York-based Jury "is the opposite of Law & Order," says Fontana, 52. "It's not about the brilliance of Sam Waterston," who plays Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy.

"It's about how ordinary people reason and come up with a verdict. It's less about legal issues than it is about emotional, human issues," Fontana said.

Jury was developed for ABC. Having reasonable doubt about going forward, it hung onto the rights for a full year before allowing Fox to take over.

For casting, Fontana went mostly with unknowns. One exception: Sidney Lumet, an Oscar nominee for his direction of the classic 1957 jury drama, 12 Angry Men.

Lumet was set to play the judge for The Jury, but two days before production began, he slipped on some ice and got a black eye. He decided to withdraw "because he thought it would look odd, and we'd have to explain it," says Fontana.

When Levinson moaned about having to replace Lumet on such short notice, "I said I knew another famous person we could get cheap," Fontana says. Levinson "was resistant, but it was the expedient and clever thing to do."

As with Fontana's previous series, Homicide: Life on the Street and St. Elsewhere, Jury's storytelling will be unique. "We're as different from a courtroom show as Homicide is from a cop show."

Jury is Fox's third courtroom drama, following 1990s Against the Law and '95's one-episode The Great Defender. Both were about maverick Boston lawyers. (Paging David E. Kelley.)

Shalom Harlow and Anna Freil will rotate as defense attorneys in each Jury episode. Ditto for Billy Burke and Jeff Hephner as assistant D.A.s. Levinson's Judge Horatio Hawthorne runs throughout.

The lawyers are young and hot - this is Fox, after all - but Fontana says juries will be "diverse, older and less gorgeous."

With that in mind, look for one of the Tom Fontana Players - Richard Belzer's Detective John Munch - to receive a summons.

If Munch can't get out of jury duty, Belzer will have played him on a record six shows, including Homicide; Law & Order; L&O: Special Victims Unit; The X-Files; and I, Fontana's short-lived '99 cop show on UPN.

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