TV REVIEWS : An Interesting ‘Guy,’ Lackluster ‘Caroline’

Tonight marks the debut of NBC’s heralded, singles-tilted Thursday night lineup, which finds two new comedy series being safely enfolded by hit returnees.

“The Single Guy” is expected to draw a big audience because it airs between “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” And “Caroline in the City” is expected to draw an even larger audience because it’s hammocked between “Seinfeld” and “ER.”

Based on their premieres, the somewhat promising “Single Guy” is more deserving of this scheduling gift than is the routine “Caroline in the City.”

In the former, Jonathan Silverman plays a bachelor novelist who resists the relentless efforts of his married friends, Sam (Joey Slotnick) and Janeane (Jessica Hecht), to fix him up with the perfect woman. So far, so bad.

Yet the humor level rises dramatically during a dinner that Janeane gives to arrange a meeting between the unsuspecting Jonathan and a magazine writer. She turns out to be as unintentionally laughable as she is good-looking.

Although sequences in Jonathan’s apartment (where Ernest Borgnine shows up as a doorman) are limp, Silverman has the skills to make the best of his material and his likable character. He gets good support in particular from Hecht, who also has a recurring role in “Friends.” All in all, in fact, “Single Guy” flashes just enough urbane wittiness to keep you interested.

Not so “Caroline in the City,” where Lea Thompson shows little feel for comedy as unmarried cartoonist Caroline Duffy, whose insufferable former boyfriend, Del (Eric Lutes), tonight re-enters her life, putting him in conflict with her eccentric new assistant, Richard (Malcolm Gets). Caroline also has one of those wisecracking neighbors (Amy Pietz) who pops in and offers advice at will.

What Caroline doesn’t have, initially, is a script that’s either credible or humorous. When Del turns her down for a date because he already has one, she inexplicably panics, feeling she has to make him think she has a date, too. It’s an artificial crisis whose low point comes when Caroline tries to get a date by leaning out her window and plunking a handsome pedestrian with a piece of fruit. Do adults really act this way? None you’d want to be around.

This series will get a sizable audience because of its time slot. But Caroline and Del are both too infantile to gain either your respect or your attention in a premiere whose most appealing character turns out to be the protagonist’s house cat.

* “The Single Guy” premieres tonight at 8:30 and “Caroline in the City” arrives at 9:30 on NBC (Channels 4 and 36).