‘RELATIVE’ CLASHES, ‘LEG WORK’ LIMPS IN NEW CBS LINEUP

The current batch of new series looks rather promising. There’s some real prime in this fall’s prime time.

Tonight on CBS (Channels 2 and 8), however, it’s back to business as usual.

Premiering at 8:30 p.m. is “Everything’s Relative,” a comedy about two brothers with clashing personalities and life styles who share an apartment. One’s a hard hat, the other a hard head. And, yes, you’re dying to know, altogether now: How will they ever get along?

Scott Beeby (John Bolger) is 25, a construction worker, tall, handsome and a lady’s man. His brother Julian (Jason Alexander) is 33, a divorced consumer-behavioral expert, short and sort of schlumpy.

Tonight, Jason tries to keep Scott and their nagging mother (Anne Jackson) from discovering that he is again seeing his ex-wife Betsy (Kim Morgan Greene). And when Scott and Mom find out: Oh boy!!!

“Everything’s Relative” has a nice cast, but nothing funny or worthwhile for it to do. There is one scene that typifies the attempted humor: Jason is playing darts. Each time he tosses the dart, it hits the board and falls to the floor, producing quakes of laughter, supposedly from the studio audience. But, if you see the awful bit, you have to believe the laughers are either paid or electronic.

If only there were money in the budget to pay viewers to watch.

At 9, meanwhile, comes the new “Leg Work,” which has no plot, no suspense, no nothing, except charming Margaret Colin as a struggling sleuth. She’s not quite enough.

“Leg Work” is another of those series that assumes that everyone from Tip O’Neill to Margaret Thatcher dreams of becoming a private eye. In this case, it’s a former assistant D.A., Claire McCarron (Colin), who succumbed to the irresistible lure of private detecting.

There are problems, however. Claire is in trouble right away tonight when her client is gunned down before she can collect her fee, putting her in both fiscal and physical jeopardy. Will she escape? You can cut the tension with a sponge.

Claire is an appealingly vulnerable and earthy character, and Colin has a fresh, dreamy, sexy presence. But this is formulaic, predictable, tritely rendered material, interchangeable with countless other private-eye yarns and, except for Colin, is unworthy of an hour’s investment.

The daily double: long, yet tedious.

“Mistress,” a TV movie airing at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channels 2 and 8, marks Victoria Principal’s debut as a Serious Actress. And Principal, who spent nine years as traumatic Pamela Ewing on “Dallas,” comes through, giving a nice performance as the kept lover of a married man (Don Murray) whose sudden death sends her into a tailspin and reveals the emptiness of her life.

Cut off without money or resources, Rae Colton is like a dependent child adrift, rejected and degraded, unable to make a living or to have a satisfactory relationship with another man.

Written by Joyce Eliason and directed by Michael Tuchner, “Mistress” is an interesting, sensitive treatment of a downbeat theme. It’s also a flabby, meandering story--the classic tailoring for a two-hour time slot--that runs out of steam long before the movie ends.

Meanwhile, Rae is more pathetic than sympathetic, a self-inflicted victim incapable even of holding a menial job as she struggles to find her way. Grim prospects for Rae, hopeful rebirth for Principal.