Pantoliano, shown in character as Mayor Centrella, urged the audience at Tazza to lobby CBS to reconsider their cancellation of Waterfront.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

Joe Pantoliano walks past the car that belongs to his character, fictional Providence Mayor Jimmy Centrella, during shooting of Waterfront. Though CBS decided not to run the series, it was screened Monday at Providence’s Tazza Caffe, with Pantoliano and other cast members in attendance.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

Most of America won’t get to see Waterfront, the CBS television series starring Joe Pantoliano as charismatic Providence mayor Jimmy Centrella that was being produced on location in Rhode Island. Slated as a mid-season replacement, it was scheduled to air sometime next year.

Last week, CBS announced they were pulling the plug on the series, which had shot five out of a projected 13 episodes.

But at least one audience has seen Waterfront: Monday night Pantoliano showed the first two episodes of the show at the Tazza Caffe in downtown Providence.

Some in the crowded café had worked on the show, from Pantoliano himself to extras to Lyndsy Fonseca, who plays the mayor’s 16-year-old stepdaughter. Others were just curious.

Among those at the first of Monday’s two screenings were Steven Feinberg, executive director of the Rhode Island Film and Television Office, and filmmaker Michael Corrente, who is working on the film adaptation of The Prince of Providence, Journal reporter Michael Stanton’s biography of former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.

“This is not a wake; it’s a celebration,” said Pantoliano.

Still, he said he was disappointed that Waterfront will not have a shot at a national audience.

“Usually shows get made, they go on the air, and then if people don’t watch, they get canceled,” Pantoliano said. “It’s upsetting that no one will even get a chance to see this. . . . I’m very proud of it.”

Although there have been published reports that CBS was unhappy with the direction of the show, Pantoliano blamed network economics.

He pointed out that CBS had picked up 3LBS, a show about brain surgeons, to replace Smith, its canceled heist drama. Pantoliano said 3 LBS is created by Paramount, which is owned by CBS parent company Viacom. Waterfront, on the other hand, is produced by Warner Bros., which does not enjoy the same corporate connection.

“It’s in their [CBS] best interest to nurture the show that they own,” Pantoliano said.

Pantoliano said he’d at least like to be able to finish post-production on the five episodes of Waterfront that have already been shot and try to get them on the air. So far, he said, Warner Bros. has not allowed any more work on Waterfront.

The first two episodes of Waterfront shown Monday night at Tazza depict a Providence that’s midway between the sun-dappled fantasyland of NBC’s Providence and the bloody urban jungle of Showtime’s Brotherhood, another show about Rhode Island politics.

Pantoliano’s Mayor Jimmy Centrella is a fast-talking, fast-thinking, man-of-the-people leader with a roguish streak. Opposing city council members have a way of getting caught in an elevator just before an important meeting. Centrella tries to discipline his unruly teenage stepdaughter by having the Providence police ticket her car. There’s a bit of shifty business about applying to City Hall for a liquor license.

“Sometimes we have to operate under the system we inherited,” Centrella tells his wide-eyed new deputy mayor — the old one’s under indictment — played by Larenz Tate.

And Centrella is fairly brutal in his treatment of his stepdaughter’s shiftless father, who is trying to get back into his daughter’s life.

But the mayor is still meant to be the good guy, even if he bends the rules a bit.

In the first two episodes, the real villains are a heartless newspaper publisher (pure fantasy, needless to say) who prints the name of a confidential witness, and an energy executive for “Evron” who wants to bring liquefied natural gas tankers into Providence. Centrella bests both of them rather handily.

William Baldwin plays the ambitious Rhode Island attorney general. He may bump heads with Centrella later on, but in the first two episodes of Waterfront the two are more allies than enemies.

The show juggles a lot of different moods and plot developments: Centrella the good/bad politician, Centrella the family man, even a mystery involving a dead witness and a gun stolen from the attorney general’s house.

Local viewers, of course, would have been able to identify the various Rhode Island locations, among them City Hall, Hemenway’s restaurant, Benefit Street, and Waterplace Park, complete with gondolas. You would even spot Providence Mayor David Cicilline, with a gold shovel in his hand, at a groundbreaking ceremony attended by Centrella.

In one scene, a Washington bureaucrat warns Larenz Tate’s character not to ruin his career by working for Centrella in an outback burg like you-know-where.

“Providence is quaint, but hardly a place to aspire to,” she tells him.

“You haven’t tried the restaurants,” Tate replied.

In his remarks to the crowd at Tazza, Pantoliano said working in Providence was a special experience for the Waterfront cast.

“We had not considered Providence at first,” he said, “Frankly, it was the tax credit incentives that made this place interesting to us. . . . But there is something very special about working in Providence. It’s a very infectious place. You should be proud to work here and be able to raise your children here. The genuine feeling we had is that we didn’t want to leave this place.”

Pantoliano urged the Tazza crowd to e-mail CBS and ask the network to put Waterfront — at least the episodes already filmed — on the air. In a statement released yesterday, the Rhode Island Film & Television Office also urged Rhode Islanders to either write (CBS Corp., 51 W. 52nd St., New York, NY, 10019) or e-mail ( www.cbs.com) the network.

“Poignant, funny, and politically topical, with smart writing and excellent performances, we firmly believe that Waterfront would be a serious ratings contender were the public allowed to see it,” executive director Feinberg wrote.