Old tale: Orphan plays redeemer

“Kevin Hill,” premiering tonight on UPN, stars Taye Diggs (“How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” “Chicago,” a recurring role on “Ally McBeal”) as a hotshot New York entertainment lawyer and -- to use the old expression -- “ladies man” who suddenly finds himself the guardian of his late cousin’s 10-month-old daughter. It has been widely touted as one of the best shows of the new fall season and, strictly speaking -- if we are grading on a curve -- it may well be. But that is not saying much.

It’s the old Bachelor With a Baby gambit, in which a self-centered male is remade and redeemed by love for an orphan, or orphans. Its most notable television forebears are “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (from the film of the same name) and “Family Affair,” but there were also, among many others, “Punky Brewster” and “Silver Spoons” and “Love, Sidney,” and movies going back at least as far as Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid.”

It will perhaps not shock you to learn that the force behind this paean to domestication is Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions, also responsible for the good clean fun that is “The Passion of the Christ,” and parent to two other irregular-family series this year: the CBS drama “Clubhouse” (fatherless teen becomes batboy) and the ABC sitcom “Complete Savages” (Keith Carradine single-parenting five boys).

Diggs is an appealing lead, with appealing actorly support, including two alumni of “Homicide: Life on the Street” (John Seda and Michael Michele). But in spite of the pretty, talented people, and notwithstanding the evergreen possibilities of man versus baby and a heaping helping of courtroom theatrics piled on at the end, tonight’s pilot is a pallid hour, earnest enough yet lacking wit and realness. And as shopworn as the premise is, there is more fun to be had from it than making a bad face at a full diaper.

It has become commonplace that children are what turn mere chronological grown-ups into mature adults -- every celebrity with a baby says so -- and while this is undoubtedly often true, it is not necessarily true, as television (between the talk shows and the reality shows and pretty much every sitcom ever made) continually reminds us. But it’s a story we like: A man who is just a boy becomes a real man by becoming more of a woman -- at which point he becomes worthy of an actual woman.

The gender twists continue as Kevin quits his demanding boys’ club law firm -- I think we’re meant to see him as occupying the moral high ground here, but it reads as rude petulance. (Many people do confuse the two.) Ultimately, it’s just a screenwriter’s contrivance to move him down the legal food chain to a small, heretofore all-female law firm -- Michele, Christina Hendricks and Kate Levering are the attorneys -- where the exigencies of parenting are sympathetically understood.

As if all this weren’t enough challenge to Kevin’s studied maleness -- his apartment appears to have been furnished out of the Sharper Image catalog -- there is finally Patrick Breen as George, the gay nanny he eventually acquires: the Mr. French of the piece, and therefore the shadow star. (Breen is as arch as Sebastian Cabot, but more fey and less polite.) “I TiVoed a bunch of those gay shows off of Bravo for you just in case you get bored,” Kevin tells George when he first comes to baby-sit; he is as confused by homosexuality as he is by children. George, for his part, is full of sage advice. “You can’t bluff, fold and call all at the same time,” he tells Kevin, waffling between old life and new. “You have to choose.”

It’s a no-brainer. The baby is very cute.

*

‘Kevin Hill’

Where: UPN

When: 9 tonight

Rating: TV-PG D, L (may be unsuitable for young children, with advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language)

Taye Diggs...Kevin Hill

Jon Seda...Dame Butler

Patrick Breen...George Weiss

Kate Levering...Veronica Carter

Christina Hendricks...Nicolette Raye

Jessie Grey...Michael Michele

Executive producers Bruce Davey, Alex Taub, Nancy Cotton. Co-executive producer Jorge Reyes. Creator Reyes. Director Arvin Brown. Writer Reyes.