‘Bernie Mac’ Cracks Wise on Family

“The Bernie Mac Show” lights as many laughs as its star does fat cigars. And that’s a bunch.

Bold, creative and ferociously witty, Fox’s new Wednesday night sitcom pours it on in opening back-to-back episodes that find Bernie (a popular stand-up comic playing a version of himself) being tormented by his nephew and two nieces whom he and his wife, Wanda (Kellita Smith), take in after their mother gets busted for drugs.

“What does Bernie Mac know about raising children?” sasses Wanda, too busy as an AT&T; vice president to take much interest. “He tells ‘Yo mama’ jokes.”

His gorgeous contemporary home topsy-turvy, his “tough love” backfiring, Bernie is clearly overmatched by Vanessa (Camille Winbush), 13; Jordan (Jeremy Suarez), 8; and Bryanna (Dee Dee Davis), 5, none of whom is typical of the wisecracking kids that regularly populate sitcoms. Vanessa soon is no longer speaking to him; Jordan is befuddling him with asthma attacks; and Bryanna--flat-out the cutest kid on the planet--is on him for not playing Barbies to her standards: “No, she have to walk like this.”

Rarely has a grown man crying been as funny.

Bulging eyes tearing up, Bernie repeatedly pleads his case to the camera: “I should have the right to pop ‘em up side of d’head.” Of course, he never does, and none of this would work were not Bernie essentially lovable and his clashes with the kids so entertaining and widely applicable.

As are his perilous encounters in side-splitting Episode 2 with kiddie germs at Bryanna’s birthday party. To Bernie, a child is a “nasty disease-carrying midget.”

Fine stuff. But facing “The Bernie Mac Show” on NBC, unfortunately, is that impregnable hit, “The West Wing,” meaning that this comedy’s path to survival may lead through Martin Sheen’s Oval Office.

Despite his beloved stogies and regular card games with pals, “The Bernie Mac Show” is no African American “Uncle Buck,” whose CBS sitcom version wallowed in gross-out humor for its own sake. The writing here by creator Larry Wilmore is plenty pungent (Jordan wetting himself becoming a running joke, for example), yet always on the mark and never gratuitous. In other words, yo mama.

“The Bernie Mac Show” premieres tonight at 8:30 with back-to back episodes.. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).