Hitting .333 on Sitcom Circuit

The fall television season continues unfolding tonight with another clash of new comedies, “The Hughleys”--ABC’s blacks-move-into-a-white-neighborhood-and-isn’t-that-outra-geous? series--going against “Encore! Encore!” The latter is NBC’s talent-squandering half-hour about an over-the-hill opera star flamboyantly adjusting to life back home with his mother and sister as a Napa Valley vintner.

When these two series open their mouths, it’s the fat lady you hear singing.

Far above this pair is tonight’s third premiering comedy, ABC’s “Sports Night,” a smart, urbane, amusing echo of ESPN’s popular “SportsCenter.”

First of all, “Encore! Encore!” is not the flat-out disaster that many predicted after the pilot was reshot amid rumors that the series was buckling from creative conflicts. It’s just not very funny, its sparse highlights resulting from Nathan Lane’s gift for garish overplaying and making the best of slim material as Joseph Pinoni, an insufferable prima donna who has lost his voice, career and money, but not his zest for fast women and footlights. Yet even these fragile triumphs are obliterated by the din of NBC’s sweetened guffaws.

The irony here is that there is no better cast on TV. Joseph’s winery-owning mother, Marie, is played by Joan Plowright, with Glenne Headly now in the thankless role of his envious divorcee sister, Francesca, whose teenage son (Trevor Fehrman) tonight becomes Joseph’s companion on a drunken night on the town in San Francisco. They return with two bimbos.

Loud they are. If noise were humor, in fact, this would be the wittiest show in prime time. Instead, “Encore! Encore!” is two encores too many.

And “The Hughleys” is a couple of decades too late. Its premise about an African American couple seeking to retain their blackness in a middle-class white suburb belongs back in the musty attic of antique TV.

At least it’s better than Fox’s new “Living in Captivity,” which has about the same theme. Talk about your one-note shows, however.

Stand-up comic D.L. Hughley is the creator, producer and star of the ABC series, playing black businessman Darryl Hughley, who happily moves into an upscale tract home with his wife (Elise Neal) and two children, only to be insulted when an 88-year-old white neighbor asks him to take her trash out. And he really gets uptight when his pal from the old neighborhood, after accusing him of losing his blackness, spots some bills Darryl is paying and is outraged. “And you payin’ ‘em on time? Who are you?”

Actually, that’s a very funny line that uses self-mockery to ridicule the stereotype of blacks being tardier bill payers than whites. And on occasion you get some other witty dialogue here, too, but all, unfortunately, in service of the same worn plot about white-enclave race-mixing that was explored on CBS in the ‘70s and ‘80s by “The Jeffersons.”

Taking his friend’s admonition to heart, Darryl comes apart when his little daughter wants a white doll, and is so suspicious of his gentle lug of a white neighbor (Eric Allan Kramer) that he responds belligerently to every gesture of friendship. By this time, his act is getting as old as the theme driving this series.

Darryl is somewhere in limbo between pablum and the black racism of George Jefferson, neither of which is very compelling in 1998.

Nonetheless, here’s pulling for “The Hughleys,’ whose performance in the Nielsens, if the trickle-down theory holds, will contribute to the success or failure of the two ABC comedies that follow: the established “Spin City” and newcomer “Sports Night.”

The latter is one of the very best new series of the season--offering fine staging and pacing and tight, funny, tender scripts about the process and people behind--and fronting--a nightly national sportscast.

One co-anchor is Dan Rydell (Josh Charles), the other Casey McCall (Peter Krause), whose job is threatened tonight as his on-camera work reflects his crumbling marriage and personal detachment and malaise. “I’ve turned into a PR man for punks and thugs,” he laments about the frequency of his show’s reports about misbehaving jocks.

Witty, Not Unlike ‘Larry Sanders Show’

His attitude shows. The network puts pressure on executive producer Isaac Jaffe (Robert Guillaume), who puts pressure on producer Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman), who puts pressure on Dan to take the matter up with his friend, Casey, and try to save his job.

Despite an intrusive laugh track that clashes with the tone of the series, this is quite terrific stuff, at once funny and poignant while offering a taste of the kind of witty, acutely insider material that gave such vivid life to HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show.”

An example is an empty suit from the network trying to quash a story by insisting the show’s demographics aren’t interested in features “about 41-year-old politically oppressed Third World distance runners.” Like hell.

“Sports Night” provides a forum not only for comedy but also for bemused observations about social behavior that relates to sports and the wider world. Episode 2 is a bit broader and joke oriented--here’s hoping that doesn’t go too far--while still accommodating a thoughtfully executed plot line about Dan being ordered to apologize on the air for his comments about drugs in a magazine interview. Few comedies so adroitly merge levity and idealism, even though it’s a strong dose of pragmatism that Dan gets from his boss when appearing to take himself too seriously.

Jaffe: “No rich young guy has ever gotten anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks.” Here’s one new series to really look forward to.

* “Encore! Encore!” premieres at 8:30 tonight on NBC (Channel 4). The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).

* “The Hughleys” premieres at 8:30 tonight on ABC (Channel 7). The network has rated it TV-PG-L (may be unsuitable for young children, with an advisory for coarse language).

* “Sports Night” premieres at 9:30 tonight on ABC (Channel 7). The network has rated it TV-PG-L.