Bedeviled by lack of laughs

It’s easy to see why TV executives are keen to center shows on Bret Harrison. He’s unobtrusively handsome, quick with a sheepish smile and very good at talking, in the way that bright, socially uncertain but promising young men often are. He’s like a young Ron Livingston, with a touch of Dave Foley mixed in for slapstick. And what’s more, Harrison is cool -- he’s in a moody indie rock band, Big Japan . . . with Adam Brody! (Remember him?)

Harrison’s new show, “Reaper,” (9 p.m. Tuesdays) was all promise when it debuted on the CW last month. His character, Sam Oliver, works days at a big-box home-improvement store but has otherwise been indentured to the Devil by his parents. Each week, he must capture a soul that’s escaped from hell.

If there were such a thing as a gut course in malfeasance, this is it. But nevertheless, this is the Devil’s work. The potential philosophical complications are myriad. A college dropout, Sam begins to take pride in his tasks: “I feel like a grown-up. I feel responsible now.” Previously, he’d been a college-dropout slacker. Now, he’s a college-dropout slacker with a mission.

Thus “Reaper” is something like “Ghostbusters” without the clear moral boundaries or the cool car. The premiere was directed by Kevin Smith, who knows a little something about too-clever kids working dead-end jobs (“Clerks”), and it seemed to be a natural vehicle for Harrison’s charms.

But the show’s quirks have quickly become rote. Invariably, the vessel Sam’s provided with to complete his task will break. Sam’s friends are promising but have not been developed fully. Wise-guy pretty girl Andi (Missy Peregrym) is Sam’s crush, but she’s too busy pranking their boss to notice, and the jocular Sock (Tyler Labine) responds to Sam’s powers much as one might to a touchdown in a college football game, with hoots, hollers and snappy proclamations: “That, my friend, was some fine hell sucking.”

As the Devil, Ray Wise telegraphs his evil in small ways (e.g. drinking orange juice from the carton). Why shouldn’t the Devil approximate a lecherous game show host? (Besides, for pure darkness, Wise could never top his turn as daughter-killing Leland Palmer on “Twin Peaks.”)

“Reaper” would seem to be setting Sam up for a broad, cruel revelation -- once he tries to reconcile that he’s doing the Devil’s bidding, he may well snap. Maybe the Devil is lying to him about all those lost souls. Or maybe it’s his parents who are misleading him: His mother (Allison Hossack) has a propensity toward wearing devil-red clothing, and at the end of a recent episode, his father (Andrew Airlie) was burning pages of the contract he signed to give away Sam’s soul, looking to hide something.

But sadly, “Reaper” is a sitcom with the soul of a procedural. (Can that soul be up for sale too?) At an hour long, it can be onerous to watch -- there’s barely enough unfolding to tether it together. “How I Met Your Mother” packs more plot into 30 minutes.

And worse, this isn’t the first comedy to have failed Harrison. Last year, he had the lead on Fox’s “The Loop,” a winning show about employees of a cut-rate airline (on which his character was also named Sam). Before that, Harrison was an amusing regular on the underachieving “Grounded for Life.”

“The Loop” didn’t live to see a second season -- a shame, really. It was smart and tight, with a strong cast of supporting eccentrics.

Best of all, it took only a half-hour.