Hair today …

Success is in the details. At least according to My Name Is Earl star Jason Lee. To nail his first TV role as a slacker who seeks redemption, his facial hair had to be just right.

“We tried a Fu Manchu, but they thought I looked a little too shady,” Lee says. “So we shaved the Fu Man and left Tom Selleck.”

He said the network would focus its promotional resources on a handful of upcoming shows that he sees as particularly promising, most notably a quirky comedy called “My Name is Earl,” starring Jason Lee as a reformed crook determined to repay his debts to society.

NBC, the former powerhouse network that faltered last year in the wake of losing ”Friends” and ”Frasier,” has placed its hopes for a rebound in the hands of an unlikely white knight — a quirky man named Earl.

Earl is the protagonist of a Tuesday night comedy, ”My Name Is Earl,” set to debut this fall. It stars Jason Lee as a crook who wins the lottery and begins to do good deeds.

Kevin Reilly, NBC’s president of entertainment, told attendees at the Television Critics Association summer conference here yesterday that ”My Name Is Earl” has tested higher among focus groups than any other NBC show in 15 years, including ”Friends.”

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Greg Garcia, the creator of ”My Name Is Earl,” said his aim for the show is to get people emotionally invested in the character, a lovable man who tends to attract misfortune. ”I’m concentrating on finding big, funny moments people will talk about the next day,” he said.

In the pilot episode, for example, Earl, who is rather down on his luck financially, jumps for joy after winning $100,000 on a scratch ticket. He runs into the street, only to be hit by a car. As he lays on the ground, he watches his lottery ticket blow away.

Garcia pitched the show to Fox in 2003, but the network passed. ”They didn’t feel it could be a series,” he says. NBC, however, was sold.

Reilly certainly has a lot riding on ”Earl,” as well as on the other new programs.