Hearing It Again and Again Through ‘Grapevine’

“Grapevine,” a remounted CBS comedy about relationships, is as dim as television gets. Think of the gorgeous vapid couple Woody Allen meets on the street in “Annie Hall,” and you about have it.

Instead of Manhattan, though, this blur of beauty’s setting is Miami. Instead of two fleeting characters meant to be objects of ridicule, moreover, “Grapevine’s” young ensemble players are the centerpieces of each half-hour. Where they talk and talk and talk in the first several episodes, framed in close-ups that magnify their good looks.

What is said by cruise line executive Susan (Kristy Swanson), hotel manager Matt (David Sutcliffe), restaurateur David (Steven Eckholdt) and David’s brother, sportscaster Thumper (George Eads), is supposed to transfix viewers. Yet these people have nothing on their minds beyond themselves. Living lives without texture or substance, they move from embrace to embrace in experiences as smooth as the stones washed onto the beaches they often inhabit.

Eckholdt was the original Thumper when “Grapevine” aired briefly in the summer of 1992. Although the aptly named Thumper is the shallowest of the present group, they are all bricks with mouths, making continual asides to the camera the likes of:

“He has a real fear of commitment.”

“She has a real fear of commitment.”

“So we went to dinner.”

“So I’m kissing my friend’s wife in a parking lot and I don’t feel guilty about it all.”

So what?

The wit is woeful, and the writing much tamer and duller than on HBO’s “Sex and the City,” a vastly funnier, smarter and enjoyably raunchier comedy about obsessive relationships through the eyes of females.

* “Grapevine” premieres tonight at 9:30 on CBS. The network has rated it TV-PG-DL (may be unsuitable for young children with special advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language).