Hey, ‘Girlfriends,’ What’s So Funny?

New prime-time season, old standards.

“Girlfriends” affirms that Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph I. Lieberman is right about much of television being exceptionally raunchy. In fact, tonight that bar is raised even higher (or lowered, depending on your view). The eye of the beholder will determine whether UPN’s new comedy is as funny as it is raw.

This beholder says no.

“Girlfriends” is about four good-looking, skinny women in Los Angeles, all of them single and African American. The obvious comparison is HBO’s “Sex and the City,” a much more graphically libidinous comedy about a swell-looking female foursome with roving eyes for men in New York City. Besides locale, a difference is that “Sex and the City” is as white as “Girlfriends” is black.

It’s also infinitely more sophisticated and wittier than the intrusively laugh-tracked UPN series, whose characters haggle noisily and crack juvenile sexual jokes, one after the other. Next week, the ribald one-liners become sight gags.

As for sexual content, you won’t watch cable’s “Sex and the City” without paying a monthly fee to receive HBO, but “Girlfriends” is available to anyone, including kids, with access to a TV set. It airs at 9:30 p.m. here, 8:30 in some areas of the U.S.

If you don’t want it, though, you have permission to turn it off. That’s the U.S. way. Or if your set is equipped with a V-chip, you can veto it electronically. This gentle reminder is necessary because of an ongoing crusade by Lieberman and others against TV they deem inappropriate, but which millions upon millions of Americans enjoy watching.

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It remains to be seen how many of them find fun in “Girlfriends,” whose hub is Joan Clayton (Tracee Ellis Ross), a rising attorney about to become a junior partner in her firm. She frequently reveals her inner thoughts to the camera.

A flap ensues tonight when Joan’s girlfriend, real estate agent Toni Childs (Jill Marie Jones), brings Joan’s former lover to a birthday party Joan throws for herself. The show signals its age attitude when Joan is embarrassed to admit she’s a moldy 29.

The men in this series are caricaturish appendages whose task is to appear as wooden as possible, at which they succeed. The other girlfriends in Joan’s life are her mouthy assistant, Maya Wilkes (Golden Brooks), and Lynn Searcy (Persia White), who is working on her third master’s degree. If she’s so bright, what is she doing with this giggly crowd, none of whom appears smart or mature, least of all Joan, despite her posh career?

The second episode finds her admitting she hasn’t had sex in a year, which launches talk of condoms and the oversized “myth of the black-male penis,” which is illustrated in fantasy send-ups showing a pair of African American men clutching themselves You Know Where.

Says one: “I gave up smoking, I had to do something with my hands.” Another: “If you had a pocket full of gold, you’d touch it once in a while.”

If only that gold extended to the show’s writing. Is “Girlfriends” a lowercase “Sex and the City”? Much, much lower.

* “Girlfriends” premieres tonight at 9:30 on UPN. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).