TV REVIEW : ‘Black Tie’ Not Worth Dressing Up For

That cutting-edge narrowcaster Jay Tarses is at it again.

The brilliantly inventive mind behind “Buffalo Bill,” “The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story” and “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” Tarses is known for creating indelibly memorable half-hour series that are as baffling to most mainstream viewers as they are beloved by his fans. Yours truly is one of the biggest.

Yet his new NBC series, “Black Tie Affair,” is evidence that the gap separating Tarses from the rest of humankind may have widened. Its two-episodes-in-one premiere, from 10 to 11 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39, reminds you of one of those high-pitched whistles that only dogs hear.

“Black Tie Affair”--Tarses was furious when NBC dropped “Smoldering Lust” as the title--may or may not be a comedy. Hard to tell. Its protagonist is Dave Brodsky (Bradley Whitford), bumbling operator of prime-time’s first record store/private detective agency. When we meet him tonight, he’s wearing a bellboy suit, hired by Margo Cody (Kate Capshaw) to spy on her clothing-catalogue tycoon husband, Christopher (John Calvin), an equally bumbling philanderer who winds up having a fling with a corpse instead of his expected tryst-mate, the alluring Eve Saskatchewan (Alison Elliott). If this seems ambiguous, to say nothing of amorphous, it is.

Tarses slips his characters into a seductively sexy, romantic arena to counterpoint his purposely overcooked dialogue. Scantily clad Margo to Christopher: “You’ve chosen to strap our marriage into a chair, pry open its mouth and yank its teeth out, like a heartless periodontist.”

It’s a wisp of a moment, a dart of humor that isn’t sustained, for there’s no shape here, no center, no strong character connections, no guiding intelligence, no light at the end of a tunnel. In fact, no tunnel, just a bunch of people mouthing lines in a vacuum.

Like others who have brought a bit of genius to television, Tarses is doomed forever to be compared to what he’s done in the past. That applies to his “Black Tie Affair,” which is not “Buffalo Bill,” not “ ‘Slap’ Maxwell,” not “Molly Dodd,” but a smoldering bust.