Drama * NBC’s fresh ‘Ed’ has quirky characters and shows great promise.

You can wait an entire season and not meet a TV character as unique and endearing as Stuckeyville Stan, the legendary small-town magician who arrives like a rabbit out of a hat in the jubilant second episode of NBC’s “Ed.”

Played to the hilt by 80-year-old Eddie Bracken, a popular comedic actor from an earlier era, Stan is an example of how off-center, secondary characters are as much the soul of this highly original, whopper new comedy/drama as they were on the late, great “Northern Exposure.”

Although no moose, Ed Stevens himself (Tom Cavanagh) is distinctive for prime-time, a former New York lawyer now back in his hometown of Stuckeyville, Ohio, and single again after catching his wife sleeping with the mailman. Ed’s voice is squiggly, and his hair looks like he’s coiffed it every morning with his pillow, making him in all ways memorable.

Sunday’s premiere finds Ed pursuing his former high school crush, Carol Vessey (Julie Bowen), and buying a failing bowling alley. Assisted by three employees, who are just a sketch, he begins turning the place into a town centerpiece where he also practices law.

Patron: “I need a lawyer.”

Ed: “You’ve come to the right bowling alley.”

In L.A., the nation’s first bowling alley/law office would also be a nail salon. Yet the refurbished new Stuckeybowl will do quite nicely, for “Ed” practices not only an unusual brand of law--this isn’t reality, remember--but a warm, tender, funny, smart brand of storytelling that potentially may lift this series high into the stratosphere of elite television.

Again like “Northern Exposure,” it’s cleverly positioned at a busy cross-section of story opportunities, from the budding romance between Ed and Carol (a schoolteacher who already has a boyfriend) to the adventurous domesticity of Ed’s close friend, Mike (Josh Randall), and his wife, Nancy (Jane Marie Hupp). Played with flare by Hupp, Nancy is a new mother whose coming encounter with a pristine-perfect baby-sitter is funny enough to put you on the floor.

There are some glitches. Ed is awfully juvenile for an adult, and Cavanagh at times too mannered and the series too precious, as when Ed on Sunday wears a suit of armor to deliver a birthday bouquet to Carol in her classroom. Bad idea. Also, maybe he shouldn’t be hanging out in bed with Mike and Nancy.

If the premiere is merely good, though, there is sheer magic in that coming episode that has wondrous Stuckeyville Stan becoming Ed’s client while he and his staff of eccentrics polish his bowling alley to a comedic sheen. In doing so, they give rich new meaning to the “world of possibility” that Stan advertises.

Great stuff. Not a perfect strike, but close.

* “Ed” premieres Sunday night at 8 on NBC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).