TV Reviews : Cutesy ‘Archie’s Wife’ Is All Sugar, No Spice

Like, say, quintuple chocolate fudge, some TV treats are too rich, too cute to digest. Like “The Secret Life of Archie’s Wife,” airing Sunday night at 9 on Channels 2 and 8.

The premise is cute: Bunny (Jill Eikenberry) has an insensitive jerk-of-a-husband, Archie, and two jerk kids. She wallows in the dumps because her best friend died, then she finds out that Archie is carrying on with a tootsie. Life holds no prospects for her.

But along comes Walter (Michael Tucker), a bumbling sort of ne’r-do-well who kidnaps Bunny in his flight from a bank robbery. In the ensuing romp, Bunny breaks free of her doldrums and the unlikely pair falls in love.

They plot to extract a $500,000 ransom from Archie and live happily ever after.

Eikenberry plays Bunny and her quirkiness with respect, even affection. Even if this movie is silly and surreal, she gives Bunny a poignancy that holds the show together. On the other hand (without wanting to create a schism between Tucker and Eikenberry in their off-screen marriage), Tucker adds cute to the already-cute script and comes up several cutes long.

There are some moral uncertainties in the story, such as Walter and Bunny’s scheming and stealing, which they get away with. Sure, people get away with shady dealings all the time, but real life has no business in prime time.