‘Inside Schwartz’ Is Out of Its League

NBC’s “Inside Schwartz” is a guy show, a dumb guy show, edging the same network’s “Emeril” as the most witless new comedy of the season. Here is one of those series that looks bad on paper, then does the unforeseeable, the utterly unthinkable by playing even worse on the screen.

Inspired by ABC’s pioneering “Inside Sports,” the title refers to sports fanatic Adam Schwartz (Breckin Meyer), who moonlights as a part-time minor league baseball announcer while working for his obnoxiously libidinous father (Richard Kline), who owns a sandwich shop chain.

Young Schwartz’s bachelor social life in shambles, each time he has an inner thought or fantasy about his life up pops a sports figure to express it for the TV audience.

As when he’s turned off by a date licking his face. Football referee: “Illegal use of tongue!”

If that sends you, so will cameo lines by Bill Walton, Mills Lane and Dick Butkus that sound like they were written by a bunch of palookas getting loaded at a sports bar.

Schwartz on his regular girl kissing him off: “To quote Dick Butkus, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over.”’

Butkus: “Trust me, Schwartz, it’s over!”

Well, the bellowing electronic laughter loves it.

As it does Eve calling “an audible” in “the Chevrolet play of the game,” and sportscasters Kevin Frazier and Van Earl Wright announcing Schwartz’s life like a sports event (“Let’s check in on the action ... “). Let’s not.

Schwartz’s pal, Julie (Miriam Shor), is more tolerable than his father, but his other friend, David (Bryan Callen), is only marginally human. All in all, “Inside Schwartz” is guilty of the unforgivable in comedy.

Illegal use of awful jokes.

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“Inside Schwartz” premieres tonight at 8:30 on NBC. The network has rated it TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14).