TV Reviews : ‘Married People’: The 30-Minute Itch

Like some marriages, the premiere of ABC’s comedy series “Married People” (9:30 tonight on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) starts promisingly.

“White folks are movin’ in, always a bad sign,” Olivia (Barbara Montgomery) remarks to her husband, Nick (Ray Aranha), about the gentrification of their working-class Harlem neighborhood, which has turned the brownstone they own into a trendy apartment that they now share with two upper-middle-class white couples.

Nick: What white folks wanna live in Harlem for anyway?

Olivia: Some real estate genius called it Central Park North and they bought it.

One of the couples who “bought it” and now reside above Olivia and Nick on the second floor are Elizabeth (Bess Armstrong), a pregnant attorney who vows that her new condition will not change her career or life style, and her husband, Russell (Jay Thomas), a stay-at-home free-lance writer who is starting to feel old at 36. In the attic apartment are snuggling, smooching newlyweds Allen (Chris Young) and Cindy (Megan Gallivan). Three couples in different stages of wedlock share a house and their matrimonial joys and problems. It’s a nice premise.

Again like some marriages, however, “Married People” ultimately settles into a rut, a sort of middle-range monotone buzz. It’s not exactly stupefying, but the lows far outnumber the modest highs and the thrill is definitely gone.

Although the gruff-but-golden Nick gets most of the one-liners, the most appealing element of “Married People” is the matriarchal benevolence of Olivia, who wears well. The least appealing is the drowning dewiness of the newlyweds. Cindy is especially grating. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Russell are in between: nice but, well . . . anyway.

You can see “Married People” as an occasional fling, but a meaningful long-term relationship seems out of the question.