Commentary

As the new fall TV shows dribble out, few are successes. NBC has a hit in “Empty Nest.” ABC has a big hit in “Roseanne.” CBS has no hits.

CBS is the network in the biggest trouble when it comes to prime time. The network has the humiliating distinction of airing a new series that is so far the worst and the worst-rated of them all: “Raising Miranda,” on Saturday nights.

“Raising Miranda” is not, as the title might imply, about levitating a corpse. And then again it is. The new CBS sitcom seems almost to be holding a wake for itself.

The unpromising premise finds a middle-class husband in Racine, Wis., left to care for his 14-year-old daughter Miranda after his wife pulls a “Kramer” and walks out. She went to a self-improvement seminar, it seems, and that inspired her to hotfoot it off to Phoenix, without so much as a by-your-leave. But then by-your-leaves aren’t really in vogue these days.

For instance, TV critics who request by-your-leaves because constant exposure to tripe is sapping their will to live are often turned down by cold, unfeeling (some might even say devil-possessed) editors.

On the premiere of “Raising Miranda,” poor little Miranda (likable Royana Black) had to go to school on the first Monday after Mom had left and face the solicitous posturings of classmates, as well as a festival of tittery gossip.

Why couldn’t the parents just have divorced? Why did the mother have to be made an irresponsible (unseen) heavy? Perhaps divorce is so commonplace now that this wouldn’t have been sufficiently dramatic. There’s no evidence the writers and producers are going to explore the situation with much insight anyway, and it certainly doesn’t lend itself to great walloping yockety-yocks.

Modestly dreadful as it is, “Raising Miranda” is an improvement on the original pilot for the show, then called “Close to Home.” Its first act had the mother still living with the family, then abruptly disappearing after the middle commercial. Smarmy sex jokes were added to liven it up; most of those, mercifully, are gone.

In addition to “Raising Miranda,” two other CBS pilots, the new Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore sitcoms, both went back to the drawing boards after disastrous preliminaries. There’s a pixilated, televisiony kind of logic, then, in the fact that CBS has chosen as its fall promotional slogan, “Are you ready?”

Obviously, “Are we ready?” would be more appropriate. However, things began looking up for CBS, at least in terms of quality, with the premiere of “Murphy Brown,” which airs on Monday nights.

“Murphy Brown” hit its stride the minute Candice Bergen strode onto the screen. Star power still counts for something in this star-saturated age, and Bergen makes “Murphy Brown” seem even better than it is.

Bergen’s buoyant Brown is a top correspondent for a prime-time magazine show called “FYI.” She has the looks of a Diane Sawyer and the temperament of a Sam Donaldson, a combination that would be enough to intimidate Capt. Ahab. Murphy is glamorous, she’s smart, and she gives short shrift to twits.

On the premiere we learned that Brown has just returned from a month at the Betty Ford Center and has also tried to give up smoking. So she chews up pencils and chews out secretaries.

Aghast to find a human cotton ball has been added to the cast of “FYI” --a former Miss America, played by Faith Ford--and to learn that her new executive producer is a damp 25 years old, Brown faces each new test with resolve tempered by hysteria. It is a winning characterization and though Bergen was a touch too manic on the first show, the snappy pace and feisty banter are refreshing.

Bergen is, let’s admit it, so gorgeous that she could get away with being merely presentable in her performance, and some of us still would be shouting “Bravo.” But she’s a lot better than presentable; she’s able to play a flawed and fallible character endearingly, and to bring this neat trick off with panache.

One would be tempted to call her a Mary Tyler Moore for the late ‘80s, but that would be at the risk of offending Mary Tyler Moore, still very much around. Much about “Murphy Brown” suggests Moore’s old CBS show: the newsroom situation, the surrogate family of wacky co-workers.

But whereas Moore’s Mary Richards was but a spunky underling, Bergen’s Murphy Brown throws her weight around. She’s a big cheese and one envies her for it. We’ve all come a long way, babies.

“Murphy Brown” crackles, flashes and scintillates. It’s a piece of good news for viewers. And considered along with forthcoming shows like “TV 101” and “Almost Grown,” it suggests that CBS hasn’t gone completely pie-eyed after all.