‘Thanks’ for Just a Few More Laughs

Attention! Here is your guide to what’s funny.

On CBS, Dan Rather is funny. On CNN, Larry King is funny. On the Fox News Channel, Matt Drudge is funny. On MSNBC, everything is funny.

In prime time, on ABC, “Sports Night” is funny. On CBS, “Everybody Loves Raymond” is funny. On NBC, “Frasier” is (and “Noah’s Ark” was) funny. On Fox, “Ally McBeal,” “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill” and “Futurama” are funny. On UPN, “Dilbert” is funny.

On the WB, nothing is funny.

Nothing has been as funny as NBC’s “Seinfeld.” Except perhaps--and this is still being debated in high places--HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show.”

And on occasion:

“Your Show of Shows,” “Caesar’s Hour,” “The Honeymooners,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “All in the Family,” “Maude,” “Sanford and Son,” “Taxi,” “MASH,” “Cheers,” “Buffalo Bill,” “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” “SCTV,” “Frank’s Place,” “Moonlighting,” “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” “The Tracey Ullman Show,” “The Wonder Years,” “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose,” “Dream On,” “Ellen,” “Beavis and Butt-head,” “South Park,” “The PJs,” Godzilla movies, TV promos, Martin Short as a guest, Dr. Joyce Brothers and Barbara Walters when she’s working tirelessly at being sincere.

In Los Angeles, local news is funny.

And some of the mail and calls responding to this column (excluding swastikas and threats of bodily harm) will be funny.

In other words, there is no universal standard for humor. A funny comedy is one you think is funny. But . . . you read it here first:

Tonight, “Thanks” is funny.

The scarlet letter is “A” for this rollicking little sitcom about Pilgrims that CBS hopes will extricate viewers from the summer TV doldrums.

“Thanks” takes place in Plymouth, Mass., in 1621, not an especially witty year, according to recorded history. Yet not to worry, for that obstacle is surmounted by clever writing and cast members--led by British actor Tim Dutton as platitude-gushing patriarch John Winthrop--whose comic timing and overall terrific flair for humor give neat twists to the smart, funny, moderately ribald lines they’re asked to deliver.

Kirsten Nelson is John’s wife, Polly; that supreme farceur Cloris Leachman is morbid, male-lusting Grammy Winthrop; and Jim Rash is the family’s slow-witted friend, Cotton, in a seamless meshing of high-toned cast and writing rare for prime time.

“He’s our village idiot,” Grammy informs visitors from Jamestown about Cotton in Episode 2. The flattered Cotton’s embarrassed, aw-shucks reply: “Well . . . it’s nothing official.”

It’s been a hard winter, the Winthrops’ first in this rigidly prim settlement inhabited by blue-nosed former Brits, a place where fun “goes against everything we stand for,” and where disrobing in front of others is frowned on. “I love you when I get to see your hair,” John says tonight when Polly removes her bonnet.

It’s also where the Winthrops’ youngest daughter, Elizabeth (Amy Centner), is so sensibly bright and visionary that she’s suspected of being a witch. Where their oldest daughter, Abigail (Erika Christensen), is a typical moody teenager (“Oh, I hate this continent”). Where the butchering local dentist hands out a complimentary leech “to bring down the swelling.” And where John, who runs a general store, and his family are poor, poor, poor.

“Get up, children. The boiling water is ready.”

“Water! Can I lick the spoon?”

Tonight’s premiere is laugh-out-loud funny, next week’s second episode even funnier when the introduction of tobacco in Plymouth creates mass addiction and Elizabeth’s proposal for warning labels is rejected, when Grammy defends the Plague, when Polly invents “mocking” as a form of ridicule, and when a scraggly French trapper back from a long hunt in the wild is introduced to Polly’s attractive female cousin:

“May I mount you?”

Mingling broad period satire with contemporary attitudes and points of reference can be tricky. The results are often sophomoric, gimmicky and tediously repetitive, witness the failure of last season’s deservedly short-lived UPN comedy “The Secret Life of Desmond Pfeiffer.” And grim as it is, the brutal 50% New World mortality rate facetiously cited in tonight’s premiere is still less than that for new TV series such as “Thanks,” which though a nice little hoot, isn’t likely to make lists of all-time greats.

On the other hand, though fast and vigorous, the jokes in “Thanks” are unforced, it has a beneficial time slot between “The King of Queens” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” and one hopes this six-episode trial earns executive producers Phoef Sutton and Mark Legan a return appearance at midseason. If it doesn’t happen?

Not funny.

* “Thanks” premieres tonight at 8:30 on CBS. The network has rated it TV-G (suitable for all ages).

* Howard Rosenberg’s column appears on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached by e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com