Hewitt Links Up With a New Party of Five

“Time of Your Life” isn’t.

It’s amiable enough, though, throwing an enormous post-”Party of Five” spotlight on Jennifer Love Hewitt as 20-year-old Sarah Merrin, all fresh and dewy in cynical New York, where she has ventured in hopes of picking up the trail of her biological father and finding out about her birth mother.

Her former boyfriend, Bailey, is now a San Francisco memory, and looming just beyond the opening credits is a new party of five that includes the struggling actress Romy (Jennifer Garner), who takes her in as a roommate, as one by one the ensemble begins taking shape.

Even in tough old New York, Sarah is instantly loved. And what’s not to love? The camera surely adores the creamy Hewitt and her expressive eyes, and she gets to sing a pair of songs.

However, there’s little in the premiere to separate this series from the pack except a sequence that has Sarah closing in on the theater big shot she believes to be her biological father and pursuing him right into the men’s room at a posh gala that he’s attending. Although predictable, their encounter, with her explaining why he matters to her, is nicely shot and quite poignant without being manipulative.

That alone bodes well for this series, whose tender young heroine is told by one of her new friends tonight to “invent yourself” because she can be anyone she wants. Time for a dose of realism. Let’s hope she doesn’t want to be Ally McBeal.

* “Time of Your Life” will be shown tonight at 8 on Fox. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).