‘The Naked Truth’ Stripped of Its Spark

There is no actress in television more gifted at comedy than Tea Leoni. Hence the herculean effort it must have taken to neutralize her in NBC’s version of “The Naked Truth,” a comedy that spent last season (its first) on ABC. To say nothing of poorly served Holland Taylor, another skilled holdover from the ABC series that introduced a sleazy celebrity tabloid named the Comet.

The calamity is especially noteworthy in that “Naked Truth” has at least temporarily been granted the prized time period between NBC monster hits “Seinfeld” and “ER,” ensuring it tonight the same enormous sampling given its predecessor, the first-season Brooke Shields comedy, “Suddenly Susan.”

Talk about humdrum comedy and creative bankruptcy. Add “The Naked Truth” to the blur of sitcoms that have opened their seasons by having insecure office employees panic in response to management changes. In this case, the interloping executive is George Wendt, who has toppled from a “Cheers” bar stool into the more sobering role of Les Polansky, the Comet’s new editor in chief by virtue of its purchase by his family’s meat business.

Thus Leoni’s divorced Nora Wilde gets reluctantly shifted from staff photographer to advice columnist, and Taylor’s embittered, acid-tongued Camilla Dane is dumped as head of the paper and limited to being a gossip columnist.

It appears the Comet is going almost legit. By having Les insist that it print only truth, the producers are depriving the paper of the noxious personality that gave “The Naked Truth” its occasional bite last season. And only rarely is the leggy Leoni, meant to be the sun of the Comet, able to show off her distinctive, grandly gawky physical style amid a stultifying flat script that finds her making peace between Les and Camilla.

A second episode--in which Tom Arnold turns the tables on Nora after she writes negatively about him, and two of her colleagues pretend to be gay to curry favor with Les--is mostly just irritating.

Leoni is too talented to be counted out after just two episodes, but too talented, also, to be squandered on a series that appears faceless in a crowd of comedies.

* “The Naked Truth” airs Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. on NBC (Channel 4).