TV Reviews : ‘Beauty Shop’ Takes On a ‘New Attitude’

That bastion of female clubbiness, the beauty parlor, is the setting for a new sitcom, “New Attitude,” premiering on ABC at 9:30 tonight (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).

This is an upscale, black beauty shop run with panache by two sisters, (the chic, sensible Sheryl Lee Ralph and the brassy, mischievous Phyllis Yvonne Stickney). Morris Day, a beautician called Lamarr, “the prince of perm,” is also a regular, albeit looking a bit wan in this henhouse where sexual innuendo and Oprah Winfrey’s diet top the conversation.

The pilot episode airing tonight (followed by the first of eight regularly scheduled shows premiering Friday) is encumbered by an inane plot about a lawsuit from a customer who claims her hair turned green after a visit to the salon. We don’t see the plaintiff, only her attorney (lame guest star Clark Johnson), who’s ogled by the chicks under the rinse.

The production’s only hope evident here is the flavor and sass of co-stars Ralph (who was one of the original Broadway “Dreamgirls”) and the turbaned Stickney, a Whoopi Goldberg-ish character with a meaner streak.

Director Oz Scott keeps the New Attitude shop’s scented captives moving to the show’s upbeat musical theme: “I’m wearing a new dress and a new hat . . . I know where I’m going and what to do.” The screen, with video bravado, fills with lascivious close-ups of wet lips. New Attitude, indeed.

The best title--and certainly funnier show--is the outrageously blunt “Beauty Shop,” the current play at the Pantages Theater, which Castle Rock Entertainment bought, sanitized and turned into this series. Tonight’s episode has a quartet of writing credits (Jack Elinson, Maiya Williams, Tom Straw and Ralph Farguhar).