TV REVIEWS : A Retooled ‘Torkelsons’ Still Unfunny, Formulaic

Although it had a certain Okie charm, last season’s failed NBC sitcom “The Torkelsons” was nothing to build an evening around. Premiering at 8 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39, its retooled successor, “Almost Home,” is nothing to build even a half-hour around.

NBC has lowered the boomer on its Sooners, moving Millicent Torkelson (Connie Ray) and her three kids northwest to the Seattle home of widower Brian Morgan (Perry King), where she becomes nanny to his two gratingly snotty teen-agers, Greg (Jason Marsden) and Mollie (Brittany Murphy).

The result is a formulaic merged-household comedy, leading to the inevitable war between the snobby, condescending Morgan kids and the earnest Dorothy Jane Torkelson (Olivia Burnette) and her two younger siblings, Chuckie Lee (Lee Norris) and Mary Sue (Rachel Duncan).

Predictably, it’s the countrified Torkelsons who have all the answers and the arrogant urbanites who are the clowns. Unfortunately, neither side has much of anything witty to say, although you’d never guess it from the exploding blasts of laughter that greet even the show’s lamest jokes. Either the laughter has been sweetened or someone is using cattle prods on the audience.

Tonight, the two families tenuously adjust to each other. In an even worse subsequent episode made available for preview, Dorothy Jane and Mollie have competing 16th birthday parties.

In the process, Burnette’s sensitive Dorothy Jane is still endearing and Millicent keeps on being a good mom. Otherwise, though, this undistinguished series is so crowded with precocious kids spewing sophisticated adult dialogue that you can hardly bear them.