TV Reviews : Possibilities Ahead for ‘Frannie’s Turn’

“Frannie’s Turn” is that rare prime-time comedy with heart. If only it had a bit more humor.

One of several new series featuring females rebelling against male dominance, it premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday on CBS (Channel 2 and 8), thereafter to air at 8 p.m. Saturdays.

The likable protagonist is Frannie Escobar (Miriam Margolyes), a 50-ish seamstress who has re-evaluated her life and decided that dramatic changes are in order. She is fed up with being pushed around at work by her designer boss (Taylor Negron) and treated at home “like a cook, a waitress and a maid” by her Cuban-American husband, Joseph (Tomas Milian). His philosophy on familial democracy is as follows:

“Every man has an obligation to share the gift of wisdom with his wife.”

To make things worse, the Escobars’ 20-year-old daughter (Phoebe Augustine) is engaged to a man every bit as gratingly macho as Joseph, a development that Frannie regards as catastrophic. And the couple’s 16-year-old son (Stivi Paskoski) is irreverent and rebellious to a fault.

Frannie and Joseph are in a confrontational mode. What makes “Frannie’s Turn” so inviting, however, is its lack of shrillness--this is no knee-jerk, anti-male polemic--and the essential goodness of its central characters. Margolyes does a fine job of conveying the depth of Frannie’s pain and the extent of her anger toward Joseph and the tradition of male supremacy he represents. And Joseph, although rigidly anachronistic on gender issues, is a decent man with passions of his own, dreaming someday of returning to Cuba and dancing on “the rotting corpses of the Communist scum that defiled my country.”

If none of this sounds very funny, it isn’t. And if the intent of comedy is to evoke more than an occasional chuckle, then the premiere of “Frannie’s Turn” has to be judged a failure.

Yet this is a series to keep an eye on. To its credit, “Frannie’s Turn” is a series with layers. What it needs more of is laughs.