ANYONE who says that the characters on TV shows aren’t real is lying.

Take Neal Baer, the low-key executive producer of NBC’s hit crime drama, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” who is also the real-life model for Noah Wyle’s character on “ER,” Dr. John Carter.

“My career as a doctor kind of paralleled Carter’s,” says Baer who worked behind the scenes on “ER” for seven years as a writer and producer. “Now he’s ahead of me, Noah is the attending [physician] in the ER but I just finished my residency and got my license.”

Baer is one of those rare talents who is born with the ability to pursue any number of careers. He graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in Political Science from Colorado College; holds master’s degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Sociology; and spent a year at the American Film Institute as a directing fellow.

He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1996 – four years after joining the staff of “ER” and ultimately became one of the show’s executive producers.

A hectic job by any standard, even without simultaneously attending an Ivy League medical school.

Baer’s connection with “ER” went back to fourth grade, where he met series co-creator John Wells.

Years later, Wells hired Baer to write for his ABC war drama “China Beach.” Ultimately, Wells called Baer when Warner Bros. became interested in author Michael Crichton’s script about emergency room doctors.

The call came after Baer had earned two master’s degrees, attended film school, successfully worked in the TV business as a writer and news producer, and had decided to attend Harvard Medical School.

“John [Wells] sent me a script that Michael Crichton had finished around 1970 when he was still at Harvard,” says Baer.

“I looked at it and was like, ‘wow that’s like my life.’ It’s about medical students and residents – not the patients. John told me they were polishing it up because it was completely out of date and he asked me if I wanted to fly out to Los Angeles and pitch a story for it. I figured it was a way to pay off my staggering medical school bills.”

Baer said he showed up in Wells’ office a few days later with about 100 story ideas based on medical-school events.

“On the plane I wrote: ‘the time that two friends of mine had to sew a laceration up at Mass General. One started on one side and one started on the other and they raced to see who could get to the center first – that became a scene with Noah [Wyle] and Ming-Na,” he says.

“I wrote about the time I had to do my first spinal tap and there were no red blood cells. It’s called a champagne tap and when I did it for the first time the resident gave me a bottle of champagne. That became Noah’s first spinal tap, Tony, [Dr. Green played by Anthony Edwards] gave him a bottle of champagne and he drank it with Sherry Stringfield.”

Baer soon moved back to Los Angeles, worked on his medical degree on the weekends and flew to Boston to go to Harvard when “ER” was on hiatus. He managed to graduate a year late. And in 1999 he left “ER” to take over “SVU,” the successful first spin-off of “Law & Order.”

Baer says he tries to bring the same realism – that helped turn “ER” into one of TV’s biggest hits – to “SVU,” which is a show that ranks among the top 20 most-watched shows on TV.

“We try and find interesting stories to take the viewers to places they haven’t been. And that’s held true for the both “ER” and “SVU.”