Lust Comes Before Law on ‘First Years’

Torts and titillation.

They litigate, they love. They’re the young lawyers of NBC’s “First Years” who work their butts off when not fornicating.

Conveniently, their careers and libidos at times intersect, as when model-perfect Riley (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) and her goofy boyfriend, Egg (James Roday), research a case by having sex in a law library.

The five attractive protagonists of this pontificating but shallow and tedious new drama are first-year law graduates employed by the same big San Francisco firm, four of them also sharing a house in the Haight-Ashbury district, where the group hangs out much like the characters of “Friends.”

The premiere finds Riley rising to the occasion when representing an inmate seeking to reclaim her prison-born baby from the couple that adopted her. Her reason--and its connection to Riley’s background--make for a potentially interesting plot line that “First Years” somehow, with great effort, turns into bland Muzak.

Meanwhile, Egg and Miles (Ken Marino) get a case of their own, and Anna (Samantha Mathis) can’t locate her panties after having sex with someone whose name she can’t recall.

It appears that a moral crisis will be grafted to every case in “First Years,” which NBC says is loosely based on a British series. That happens in the premiere, and also in the second episode when Warren (Mackenzie Astin) takes on a powerful pharmaceutical company on behalf of a young man (Scott Grimes) with terminal cancer and an endless supply of dark wisecracks about his prospects: “Dying people depress me.”

He’s intriguing, and the hour has some nice moments. But this promising scenario, too, is ultimately diluted, even though Warren, an openly gay man who is undermined by his insecurities, is easily the most arresting character in the series. And in the first two episodes, about the only one who abstains from sex.

“First Years” has a sense of humor, but one that misses most of the time, and much of its dramatic writing is ponderous or seemingly ill-fitting, as in this response that Anna gives to someone who is prying: “It would be so none of your business.”

Lawyer talk.

* “First Years” premieres tonight at 9 on NBC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).