TV REVIEWS : ‘The Building’: Constructed for Laughs

Is “The Building” funny? To steal Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray’s classic home-run line: It might be, it could be, it is.

Part 2 of a Friday double bill of summer comedy premieres on CBS, “The Building” arrives at 9:30 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, a wittily written, precisely executed charmer about a struggling actress named Bonnie who has moved back to her old Chicago apartment overlooking Wrigley Field.

Despite her best efforts to conceal that she’s been dumped by her fiance, everyone seems to know, and the news is widely broadcast, even by Caray. Midway through the half hour, a home-run ball crashes through the neurotic Bonnie’s window, an apt metaphor for her misery.

Her best friend Holly (Holly Wortell): “Martyr!”

Bonnie (Bonnie Hunt): “How can you call me that after everything I’ve been through?”

Hunt created the series and recruited Wortell and other fellow alumni of Chicago’s famed Second City comedy company to be supporting players. It’s Hunt’s clever writing, John Bowab’s directing and the cast’s improvisational rhythms and impeccable comic timing that sets “The Building” apart from the crowd. As Caray also says, holy cow!

Violating a cardinal cliche, CBS is sending “The Boys” to do a man’s job.

This summer sitcom premieres at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, probing for laughs in the “manly activity” of three codgers next door to a house newly occupied by Doug the novelist (Chris Meloni) and his girlfriend, Molly (Isabella Hofmann).

After moving in, Doug gets roped into taking part in the regular Friday-night “fun” at the home of his ever-grumbling neighbor, Bert (Ned Beatty). Tonight that means playing Monopoly with retired fireman Bert and the other post-middle-age “boys,” Al the tar factory worker (Richard Venture) and Harlan the antique shop owner (John Harkins). The catch is that Bert, Al and Harlan seem to keep confusing Doug with someone named Ed, a charter “boys’ member and deceased owner of Doug’s house. This makes Doug plenty mad.

Except for one dart of wit when Doug is badgered into assuming the role of Ed, there is nothing here even to giggle about. “The Boys” seems to be striving in part for the kind of manic maleness displayed by Oscar and his card-playing cronies in “The Odd Couple,” but unfortunately these “boys,” especially Al and Harlan, are much less vividly colorful than merely grating.

Next week’s second episode is a modest improvement, with Bert’s talky but gender-repressed wife, Doris (Doris Roberts), getting a Friday-night lesson in women’s rights from libber Molly while Doug and the prehistoric crowd next door are watching “Planet of the Apes.” Although she has some amusing moments, Doris (“In my day we didn’t have self-esteem”) spews the kind of early Edith Bunker nonsense that worked in the ‘70s. Today the notion that anyone could be so hermetically sealed off from the real world seems far-fetched even in a comedy.