TV Reviews : Julie Andrews Stars in Fish-Out-of-Water Comedy

While the idea of Julie Andrews in a TV series directed and produced by husband Blake Edwards sounds like sure-fire fun, the resultant “Julie” (premiering tonight at 8:30 on ABC, Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) is so completely perfunctory a sitcom that it’s bound to induce major blahs among fans of either spouse.

Ominously, the series starts right off with a baldly unbelievable show-biz-comes-to-the-sticks premise. (The fact that Andrews plays the star of a successful prime-time network variety show--when there hasn’t been such an animal in years--is the least of its improbabilities.) In the opening scene, Andrews announces to her TV show’s producer (Eugene Roche) that she’s moving to Sioux City, Iowa, to marry her humble, widowed veterinarian beau (James Farentino) and taking the show there along with her!

Irreducible doubt is cast upon her sanity when it turns out she’s never even visited the Midwest before moving herself, the producer and a supposedly major network operation there; beyond that, she hasn’t yet bothered to meet the two teen-age kids to whom she’s about to become stepmother. All this makes for a lazy, fishy fish-out-of-water premise that you’ll want to throw back.

Episode 1 ends with the couple’s impromptu living-room marriage and a wedding night interrupted by spooked kids and hubby’s animal house calls.

Episode 2 has Andrews mildly pushing her incredibly talented stepdaughter (Hayley Tyrie) to try out for a school play, then feeling inordinately guilty about it. After a while of this, “The Brady Bunch” begins to look better and better in retrospect.

Somehow, Andrews--a class act who deserves much better--just about acquits herself through the shopworn comedy cliches, but the other cast members aren’t so lucky. The simple theme music by Henry Mancini sounds as tossed-off as the show’s script.