TV REVIEWS : ‘Going Places’ Misses the Jokes

ABC’s “Going Places” is an unfunny comedy series about people trying to be funny. It premieres at 9:30 tonight on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42.

With the advent of “Going Places,” Friday night becomes almost Miller & Boyett night on ABC. In addition to this series, Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett also head “Full House,” “Family Matters” and “Perfect Strangers,” the three comedies that precede it in the lineup.

The setting is Los Angeles, where the newest members of a new writing team for a “Candid Camera”-type prime-time series called “Here’s Looking at You” are two wild and kooky brothers who josh and punch each other and wrestle on the floor. Newly arrived from Chicago, Charlie (Alan Ruck) and Jack (Jerry Levine) meet their partners, hot-looking Alex Burton (Heather Locklear) from Denver and grating New Yorker Kate Griffin (Hallie Todd).

Well, it’s hate at first sight for the guys and gals. But guess what? Their boss, producer Dawn St. Claire (Holland Taylor), not only wants these kids to work together, she wants them to . . .

LIVE TOGETHER!!!

So Dawn moves them into a fabulous house that she owns on the beach and orders them to immediately produce a funny bit for the next episode of the show. They work and work and work, and, finally, after the gals walk out in disgust and come back again, and Charlie and Jack wrestle on the floor, true genius surfaces.

But not romance. The live-in arrangement is purely platonic for now and better remain that way because, you see, Dawn . . .

LIVES NEXT DOOR!!!

The premiere of this series ranges from amiable to dumb-bordering-on-stupid. Unless that changes, “Going Places” isn’t.