CAPSULE REVIEW : Mitchum and Homeless Show Awesomely Awful

Every so often a television show comes along that is so awful both in concept and execution that it’s stunning.

“A Home for Joe,” a new NBC series that premieres Sunday night, is one of those shows.

The premise of the series is laid out in Sunday’s two-hour movie. It involves four upper-middle-class brothers and sisters, ranging in age from 6 to 15, coming up with a plan to avoid being sent to foster homes after their parents have been killed. The 15-year-old boy is the one who comes up with the great idea. Why not find someone who can pose as their long-lost grandfather? Then the phony grandfather can become their legal guardian, and all four brothers and sisters can stay together in their great suburban home with the big screen television.

The plan gets better.

To find such a person, the four kids go to the local park where homeless people live. After turning down a couple of likely looking candidates, the kids are about to get robbed by skinheads. But one of the homeless persons living in a cardboard box comes to their defense. The kids decide the Joe in the box is their man.

Joe is played by Robert Mitchum, although “played” seems a rather generous description. It’s more like he’s walking around underwater after a severe blow to the head.

When you match Mitchum’s performance with the self-conscious, amateurish affectations of Chris Furrh as Nick, the kid with the ideas, you have moments that would make parents at a junior high school play shift in their seats with embarrassment.

NBC has shown some mercy and not yet set a date for the weekly series to begin.