TV REVIEW : An Interesting but Not Funny ‘Grand’ Start

“Grand” isn’t.

Not yet, anyway. Premiering at 9:30 tonight on NBC (Channels 4, 36 and 39), this is one of those new comedies that demands several viewings before judgment. As for now, mark it down as . . . interesting.

“Grand” succeeds “Dear John” in the coveted time slot following “Cheers,” with “Dear John” moving to 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays in place of “My Two Dads,” which is moving to Sundays at 8 p.m. in place of “Ann Jillian,” which NBC says is on hiatus until March.

The cast for “Grand” is Gargantuan; the setting is a Pennsylvania town where Janice Pasetti (Pamela Reed) lives in a seedy trailer park with her daughter, Edda (Sara Rue), while working as a housekeeper for town patriarch Harris Weldon (John Randolph), whose piano factory is losing to foreign competition. Also prominent are Weldon’s duffo son, Norris (Joel Murray); Weldon’s caustic chief steward, Desmond (John Neville); Weldon’s niece Carol Anne (Bonnie Hunt), and Carol Anne’s husband, Tom (Michael McKean).

The characters are intriguingly bent, and just introducing them all consumes most of the premiere, which finds Janice briefly reunited with her estranged husband (Ed Marinaro) while Tom’s ambition to modernize the piano works brings him into conflict with the growly old Weldon.

With Reed and Randolph especially swell, “Grand” has the cast and other ingredients to be special. Despite the sweetened, hairtrigger stereophonic laughter that greets nearly every line, however, series creator Michael Leeson’s opening script is rarely funny. The potential is here, but for the moment “Grand” gives you “Chopsticks” instead of Chopin.