TV REVIEWS : ‘Carlin’ Shows Some Glimmer of Hope

George Carlin waited all these years to star in a sitcom, and he still doesn’t get to blurt the “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.” No, not even on Fox.

He does get to be a couple of those words, however, on “The George Carlin Show” (premiering Sunday at 9:30 p.m. on Channels 11 and 6), where he’s utterly irascible, to use the civil terminology. His George O’Grady, an unencumbered New York cab driver, is broke, bitchy and practically invented the word misanthropy.

He has good reason to be cranky in the first episode--having just lost his job because he won’t cut his ponytail, having lost thousands of dollars he doesn’t have to gambling debts, and having found a tiny dog that makes everyone who sees him walking it assume he’s gay.

“Hope sucks,” he tells the downtrodden waitress at his favorite beer bar, encouragingly. “People who have hope, they’re constantly worried about when it’s gonna kick in. They don’t get to have a good time. On the other hand, a guy gives up hope, he’s free to enjoy himself.”

Will folks who tune in enjoy themselves?

Well, there’s hope.

The show was created by Sam Simon, who directed and co-wrote (with Carlin) the series opener, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise when a fair amount of zingers approach home plate. Besides Carlin being a cab driver, recalling Simon’s “Taxi” stint, he spends a lot of his down time as the cynical anchor of a working-class tavern populated by a dim bartender, a busty waitress, errant yuppies and a lot of other foils, not coincidentally bringing to mind “Cheers,” another Simon alma mater. He knows his way around these comedic habitats, and the dialogue is properly tart.

If not quite properly heartfelt. Carlin makes for a very viable, potentially lovable loser, but he and Simon will need to flesh out a back story to rationalize the character’s sourness if they’re interested in establishing the distinction between curmudgeon and jerk, which is blurry in the premiere.