TV Review : ‘Steven Banks Show’: No Accounting for PBS’ Taste

Now that the Inner Child within us has been found, released and sanctified in the public discourse and across the TV talk-show spectrum, will Steven Banks be its icon? What else could explain PBS’ decision to unveil its “first scripted original comedy” that features a thirtysomething character stuck in pre-adolescence?

In “The Steven Banks Show,” Banks, a sandy-haired figure as slender as a pipe cleaner, acts like a kid who’s been kept late at school and left alone to play with his toys and indulge his moony obsessions. Even his apartment looks like an elementary-school playroom.

He plays with tiny figurines of the Beatles. He mimics rock stars who peaked 30 years ago. The eerie clowns Sid and Ernie drift through his dreams. When his landlady shows up to ask for the rent, you realize she’s asking the wrong person; she should be putting the arm on Banks’ mom. This is a character who needs adult supervision.

Apparently Banks’ infantile cuteness is on the level, and it’s an irritant that no amount of laughter on the soundtrack can assuage. Nor is there charm in the show’s amateur-level writing and direction. This show is so empty it makes “Seinfeld” look like Voltaire and his salonistes.

How did the producers manage to sucker the Corporation for Public Broadcasting into funding this turkey? Maybe it’s because Brandon Tartikoff is an executive producer (along with Susan Dietz, who produced the stage version of this show at the Pasadena Playhouse). When he was entertainment president at NBC-TV, Tartikoff once bragged of producing “little books with big print.” With “The Steven Banks Show,” he’s done it again.

* “The Steven Banks Show” premieres at 10 p.m. Sunday on KCET-TV Channel 28. It also airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on KPBS-TV Channel 15.