Danza Cooling Down ‘Hudson Street’ Scenes

Tony Danza had every intention of making his new ABC sitcom “Hudson Street” a sexy, adult comedy. After spending eight years playing a major league baseball player-turned-domestic helper in the popular family series “Who’s the Boss?,” the 44-year-old Brooklyn native was itching for more sophisticated material.

But despite “Hudson Street’s” fast start in the ratings derby, it didn’t take long for its star and executive producer to come to the conclusion that the show was a little bit too hot and sexy for its 8:30 p.m. Tuesday time slot.

Danza is currently refocusing the show to play down the flirtations between Danza and a co-starring character.

“The third week of my show we were No. 8, and I was watching the show with my 8-year-old daughter,” recalls Danza, relaxing at his production company office on the lot of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “We got midway through it and I said, ‘You can’t watch this.’

“I don’t think I was the only parent who felt that way. We shouldn’t be giving away that 8-to-9 hour to adult comedy. I lobbied for a later time slot. Now I’m going to conform a little bit to the earlier time slot.”

Apparently some fans of Danza and co-star Lori Loughlin, who is well known for her role in the long-running family series “Full House,” also had trouble accepting them in a relatively steamy, early evening romantic comedy.

In “Hudson Street” Danza plays Tony Canetti, a somewhat jaded Hoboken, N.J., cop and divorced father. Loughlin is cast as Melanie Clifford, an idealistic journalist who covers the local police beat.

An underlying romantic tension between these two opposites helped to energize the show’s early episodes. On the surface they clash, but there’s a palpable attraction that seems to pull them together despite their reservations.

Will these two strong-willed characters find love and happiness together?

It’s a question Danza isn’t in any hurry to answer now that “Hudson Street” has hooked a sizable, if not entirely satisfied, audience. (And the show faced stiff ratings competition from the NBC sitcom in the same time slot, “NewsRadio,” which is moving to Sundays on Jan. 7.)

Danza realizes that in television it’s better to keep the pot simmering for a while than to bring it to an immediate boil.