"We grew up a block away from each other" in Melrose Park, Steinberg told me last summer during a CBS party on the West Coast. "We've known each other since we were 5, 6."

"I worked at Jon Turteltaub's company," added Shotz, "and so [Steinberg] brought it to us, and we developed it with him, and here we are."

Their families still live near each other and their mothers - who are both named Barbara - "go to the same synagogue . . . and smile at each other," Shotz said.

So, yes, these are the guys who decided, for sentimental reasons, that Philadelphia should be one of the first cities that got nuked last season.

When they were deciding where the pushpins on the map should go, it was Denver first, "and then Philly," said Steinberg, a University of Pennsylvania Law School alum who also graduated from Cheltenham High and Harvard.

Why law for a guy who admits he always wanted to be a screenwriter?

"I don't think I knew that there were any other options after college," he said, while noting that a legal background has come in handy in writing "Jericho."

"It's about what happens when you remove the invisibles, when you remove the law . . . Was it worth paying for law school? Probably not. We probably could have paid somebody to do that for us. But my parents are proud."

Shotz, a Germantown Friends School grad who studied film at Wesleyan, took a slightly more direct route, starting out as an assistant to Turteltaub on "The Kid" and "National Treasure" and working his way up in the director's company, which produces "Jericho."

And now, some quick thoughts about the surprisingly satisfying "Jericho" finale (which, I know, some fans continue to hope won't be the last word, though ever-pessimistic, I'm not holding my breath for a cable pickup):

_ Did anyone tell the people at Sprint, who were advertising their usual tie-in with the show, that there wasn't going to be a next week's episode for their customers to preview?

_ Was I the only one startled by the appearance of "The Wire's" Jamie Hector as one of the soldiers? Because there was something utterly incongruous - not to mention terrifying - about the sudden appearance of the guy some of us know as an ice-cold drug kingpin in a Kansas field, and in uniform, yet.

I'm sure the character was meant to appear menacing, at least for a moment. But did they really mean him to appear that menacing?

No question that Hector deserves to work again. But I'm afraid it'll take more than a bit part in a different series' finale to erase the memory of "The Wire's" Marlo Stanfield.

_ If things don't work out for Jake (Skeet Ulrich) and Hawkins (Lennie James) on whatever cable network "Jericho's" producers hope to find the show a home, maybe Fox's "24" should consider bringing them aboard to help Jack Bauer through his next very bad day?

Adding some sex

to 'Sense'

Adapted by Andrew Davies, who's done the same for one classic after another in recent years, from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" to Charles Dickens' "Bleak House," it takes some of the usual Davies liberties (he doesn't believe in restricting himself, as Austen did, to scenes where a woman's present), but hews a little closer to the novel than Emma Thompson's 1995 film did.

At least there's no mention of a tree house in this one.

Tree houses or not, "Sense and Sensibility's" never been one of Austen's really fun books, with its unblinking look at the economics of genteel poverty, not to mention sense trumping sensibility at nearly every turn.

And Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield, as the sensible Elinor and impetuous Marianne Dashwood, aren't going to make anyone forget Thompson and Kate Winslet.

But this latest adaptation does add an element of sexiness, as David Morrissey ("Viva Blackpool," "The Other Boleyn Girl") tackles the sometimes-too-dull role of Colonel Brandon, a suitor of Marianne's whom she considers too old for romance.

Davies has him doing some things purists might not strictly remember from the novel, but fans who'd rather see Marianne swoon than merely settle can probably live with it. *

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