This tame, sometimes lame family sitcom set in a leafy Connecticut suburb is exactly the sort of prime-time pablum its star and executive producer Damon Wayans would have spoofed—nay, eviscerated—with brothers Keenen and Marlon on their irreverent '90s series In Living Color. So I kept waiting for Wayans, who plays Michael Kyle, a successful delivery-truck-fleet owner (who's also a doofus husband and dad), to step out of character, cut loose, maybe even moon the camera. No such luck. Despite an occasional riff—such as slipping a thong on his head and refashioning it as a chic eye patch—Wayans mostly settles for being the put-upon reactor to his newly empowered stockbroker wife, Janet (Tisha Campbell-Martin), their sassy, in-your-face teenage son Jr. (George O. Gore II), self-absorbed pubescent daughter Claire (Jazz Raycole) and cute-as-a-Teletubby toddler Kady (Parker McKenna Posey). There are some refreshingly dissonant notes—Michael and Janet are seeing a marriage counselor—and Wayans and the kids have a snappy, playful rapport. Otherwise this is a Cosby Show wannabe without a cause.
Bottom Line: Wayans way off his game
NBC (Mondays, 9 p.m. ET)
Ally McBeal Lite. That was my first impression of this one-hour dramedy about five eager young associates at a San Francisco law firm. Riley (Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Sidney's daughter) and Egg (James Roday) have already been made partners—in bed, that is. Meanwhile colleagues Anna (American Psycho's Samantha Mathis) and Miles (Ken Marino) are rekindling their earlier office affair; and all but Anna are housemates of openly gay Warren (Mackenzie Astin). Friends Esq.—that was my second take on this crowd. No time for Central Perk, however. They banter about their sex lives while rushing off to work. Indeed the March 19 opener focused more on panties than legal briefs, and the caseload seemed just as skimpy: One suit was an interracial adoption battle with a tearjerker finale; the other an attempt by the associates' callow superior Sam O'Donnell (Eric Schaeffer) to sue the cad who left O'Donnell's alimony-hungry ex-wife stranded at the altar.
But the March 26 episode smartly gets down to business as a feisty young plaintiff (Party of Five's Scott Grimes) dying of cancer induced by a reputed wonder drug endears himself to the legal eaglets. They in turn display insightful flashes of depth and feeling—a sign of this series' potential.
Bottom Line: Could win on appeal
An American Tragedy
PBS (Mon., April 2, 9 p.m. ET)
Show of the week
STARS "1"
This Oscar-nominated 2000 documentary reopens a 1930s civil rights case—nine indigent black youths falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a freight train—and turns it into a gripping narrative of courtroom surprises (one of the women recanted on the witness stand) and twists worthy of a TV movie. In fact an NBC docudrama, Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys, aired in 1976. But while NBC played up the courage of Scottsboro, Ala., judge James Horton, who set aside the guilty verdict of an all-white jury in the second of several trials, this American Experience film takes a more jaundiced view. As one historian interviewed puts it, "Almost everyone had an agenda"—from politically ambitious prosecutors to a brilliant yet publicity-seeking defense attorney to the American Communist party, which championed the Scottsboro Boys to spur membership. Their lives, marred by violence in prison and later as free men, make for a harrowing chronicle.
Bottom Line: Edge-of-your-seat history lesson
The Film That Changed Hollywood
AMC (Tues., April 3, 8 p.m. ET)
England's Other Elizabeth PBS
(Wed., April 4, 8 p.m. ET)
When Elizabeth Taylor met costar Richard Burton on the Cleopatra set in 1962, "he was suffering from a hangover," she recalls in PBS's Great Performances paean to the screen diva. With shaking hands, he was "trying to drink a cup of coffee.... Our eyes locked." Thus began one of Hollywood's juiciest love affairs. The same story is recounted (though not by Liz, who wasn't interviewed) in American Movie Classics' two-hour autopsy of 1963's Cleopatra, then—at a cost of $44 million—the most expensive movie ever made. Ironically, you learn more about Taylor, now 69, in the dishy AMC account of her overstuffed epic than in PBS's lightweight recap of her career. Though Liz gives great anecdote—she recalls being first on the scene of the 1956 auto accident that injured her friend Montgomery Clift and tearfully reenacts her grief when she learned of third husband Mike Todd's death in a 1957 plane crash—there's not much about her accidents and illnesses or her seven other marriages (including two to Burton). By contrast AMC tells how she almost died from a pneumonia-induced coma while shooting Cleopatra and was later denounced in the Vatican and Congress for cavorting openly with Burton while their spouses (Eddie Fisher and Sybil Burton) stewed. Taylor aside, Cleopatra's cost overruns, cast changes and cutthroat intrigues are all chronicled in this first-rate primer on how not to make a movie.
Bottom Line: Liz bio fizzles; Cleo has brio
Terry Kelleher is on vacation.
>Sunday, April 1 WIVES AND DAUGHTERS PBS (9 p.m. ET)
A Masterpiece Theatre four-parter opens with two stepsisters—best friends—vying for the same beau.
Monday, April 2 MIDWIVES Lifetime (9 p.m. ET) Sissy Spacek delivers as a midwife accused of malpractice in this TV movie.
Tuesday, April 3 SURVIVOR MD PBS (9 p.m. ET) What's up, doc? Nova revisits seven physicians first profiled as Harvard med-school students in 1987.
Wednesday, April 4 TITANIC: THE REAL JACK DAWSON Discovery Channel (9 p.m. ET) This documentary says Leonardo DiCaprio's 1997 Titanic character had a real-life namesake.
Thursday, April 5 ER NBC (10 p.m. ET) George Clooney's back—in a 1995 episode—rescuing a young flood victim.
Friday, April 6 GHOSTS OF THE DEEP TLC (10 p.m. ET) A sunken Spanish galleon lures treasure hunters in this one-hour documentary.
Saturday, April 7 BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN HBO (9 p.m. ET) The Boss and his E Street Band cut loose in a Madison Square Garden concert taped last summer.
CELINE’S INFERTILITY STRUGGLE: MY PRIVATE HEARTBREAK
Daily injections, painful tests and four failed IVF attempts: The singer, 41, reveal her dreams for a second baby. ‘I’ll try until it works’
