Harper Takes On City Hall--From the Inside

What a good idea for a series.

Years of TV and newspaper headlines have confirmed our suspicion that, generically speaking, something funny is going on inside City Hall. Hence “City,” a promising CBS comedy that, in targeting the menace of bureaucracy, locates some of the humor lurking within the wider tragedies besetting many of America’s metropolises.

It premieres at 8:30 tonight on Channels 2 and 8.

What James Coco and a fleeting CBS comedy called “Calucci’s Department” wittily articulated about institutionalized denseness at a New York state unemployment office in 1973, Valerie Harper and “City” now apply to local government, with mixed results.

Harper is bright, idealistic city manager Liz Gianni, faced on the home front by an independent 19-year-old daughter (LuAnne Ponce), and on the work front by destructive city politics and a chaotic, eclectic staff, led by her assistant, Roger (Todd Sussman), who lip reads her conversations through the glass of her private office.

Tonight, co-executive producer Paul Haggis’ script has Liz being undermined by the mayor’s office when she attempts to resolve the embarrassing problem of caskets sliding out of a cemetery on a hill into people’s homes. It’s a clever premise with lots of potential for dark humor, some of which is realized. On the other hand, the mother-daughter relationship doesn’t work at all and is expendable.

Roger and some of his colleagues are overdrawn, and Liz is too sweet and vulnerable to be totally believed as a city manager, even for laughs. “For a person who runs an entire city,” her daughter observes, “you’re a very gullible person.” Exactly.

Harper, however, is so likable and skilled at TV comedy, and some of this opening episode is such a kick, that optimism prevails. For now at least, city lights shine somewhat brightly.