TV REVIEW : A Jaunty Ride on the New ‘Route 66’

On the road again.

What’s up when the world’s most sensitive steelworker meets the world’s mouthiest hitchhiker? An NBC remake of the 1960-64 CBS adventure series “Route 66” that focuses on comedy, that’s what. And a smog of banter.

Premiering at 8 tonight on Channels 4, 36 and 39, this neo “Route 66” is as aimless as its two heroes, played by James Wilder (“Equal Justice”) and Dan Cortese (“MTV Sports,” Burger King commercials).

Cortese may be overqualified. There are MTV videos that have more to say than this series, which has an initial four-episode commitment from NBC. It finds Nick Lewis (Wilder) inheriting a 1961 red Corvette from his father (the George Maharias character in the original series), then picking up babbling man/child Arthur Clark (Cortese) on the road. Off go these rovers in their studmobile, then it’s chicks, chicks, chicks.

If “Route 66” sounds as if it’s operating a few gallons short of a full tank, it is. Unlike its predecessor, it’s utterly mindless and reality proof. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for piffle that’s likable, and “Route 66” is just that. Unburdened by ideas or pretensions, this is painless, often pleasurable entertainment, a buddy series that, merely by hitting the road, renews the same sense of liberation and wanderlust evoked by the old “Route 66” and similar series featuring nomadic protagonists. Nick and Arthur have no plans or responsibilities. Like weightless, traveling lobotomies moved by wind, they just go.

Take tonight, for example. After a barroom brawl, they speed off with the girl. After she steals the Corvette, they’re stranded. After they rescue her from two thugs, she comes on to Arthur, wearing only a towel. After the motel fire, she leaves them behind again. After she flees on a yacht, they hit the road for next week’s episode two:

After rescuing local parishioners from a speeding train, they’re welcomed as heroes in the town of Seven Corners. After Arthur and a local artist sight each other across a crowded room, she has him pose semi-nude. After a local teenybopper comes on to Nick, she begs him to take her along. “I wanna see the Grand Canyon and the Kentucky Derby. I wanna ride a riverboat on the Mississippi. I wanna see ‘Cats’ on Broadway. I wanna choose a road and wait for the light to turn green, and go.”

She wants another series--for almost before she can complete her monologue, these two hearts of gold are history, zooming onward toward episode three, leaving behind no trace of themselves or their running repartee, freeing your mind for a confrontation with NBC’s new “South Beach,” which follows.