Saturday’s New Shows--No Laugh Riot

Critics of a proposed CBS sitcom version of “Driving Miss Daisy” saw nothing funny about its attempt to find humor in the segregated South of the early 1950s, where whites treated African-Americans largely like chattel.

Four decades later, is there anything funny about African-American life in a New York ghetto where a drug dealer gets away with menacing an earnest counselor at a youth center because the young man disciplined the criminal’s little brother?

We’re about to find out.

The counselor, played by former Cosby kid Malcolm-Jamal Warner, is A. J. (short for Alexander James), the graduate-student hero of the new NBC comedy series, “Here and Now,” arriving at 8 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39. And the above sequences--with A. J. getting told off in his classroom by the squirt of a little brother and then threatened by the violent older brother--are an unsuccessful attempt to give the half hour an emotional centerpiece.

The first of three undistinguished comedy series premiering tonight, “Here and Now” is followed on NBC at 8:30 by the heavy-lidded “Out All Night.” And at 9:30, Fox introduces “The Edge,” its disappointing half hour of satirical sketches airing on Channels 11 and 6.

The drawback to “Here and Now” is not the lead--Warner is likable and credible--but an absence of humor. Although the willingness here to confront inner-city anger is commendable, it initially produces little to laugh about, even if A. J.’s best pal, T (Daryl “Chill” Mitchell), is a jive-talking former petty thief, and even if A. J.’s unofficial “Uncle” Sydney (Charles Brown) does bristle when his “nephew” gets goo-goo eyes for his daughter.

Like an unstoppable scourge, relevance is now prime time’s latest contagious affliction. So much so that September’s schedule is punctuated by series--both comedies and dramas--with the Los Angeles riots woven into their plots. Although set in Manhattan, “Here and Now” indirectly touches on a similar social theme. Its premiere climaxes with A. J. and the drug dealer having a tense faceoff, applying an exclamation mark to its failed effort to alternate breezy one-liners and potentially lethal one-upmanship.

Viewers who prefer hearing rhythm-and-blues artist Patti LaBelle belt out bad gags instead of songs should tune in “Out All Night.” And then get help immediately.

LaBelle has a supporting role as Los Angeles nightclub owner Chelsea Paige in this low-achieving comedy about the high jinks of two young men. One of them, recent college graduate Jeff Carswell (Morris Chestnut), is hired by Chelsea to manage the popular club. The purpose of the other, Jeff’s longtime pal, Vidal Thomas (Duane Martin), is to be the show’s street-talking comic fool.

The ambitious Jeff is elated to get this dream job, which comes with an apartment where he and Vidal can live comfortably. Only later does he discover to his dismay that in addition to being Chelsea’s employee, he has become her surrogate son (“Sit up, baby. You’ll get a hunchback”).

Such Billboard blue-chippers as Hammer, Bobby Brown and Luther Vandross will show up on future shows. That’s good news, for only when the music group TLC performs in the last few minutes does the barely funny premiere of “Out All Night” rise above a barely audible hum.

Despite the presence of that supreme spoofer Julie Brown and other talented cast members, “The Edge” shatters its lampoon in its very first outing.

“It doesn’t have to be good or interesting. It just has to be cheap to produce.” That description of a TV show in one of tonight’s parodies could also apply to “The Edge” itself, which arrives with a half hour of mostly sophomoric sketches targeting the likes of Mariah Carey and groupies of Axl Rose and Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

“The Edge” does save the best for last, though, getting funny/mean with a sendup of “Designing Women” and its cast problems that has a mammoth Delta Burke (Brown) and a colossal William Conrad (Wayne Knight) locked in lumbering, stupendous, city-squashing combat a la Godzilla and Ghidrah. It’s a hoot.

But shame on the Mothras who wrote those other sketches.