‘Life’ sticks to the tried and true

The first law of the physics of television programming is that, for any given network, there will be as many hours of prime-time programming as it takes to fill the available hours of prime-time television. Although this sounds like mere tautology, a matter of x = x, it explains much about the medium. TV abhors a vacuum: Something needs to fill that space, and something will.

Certainly there seems to be no other reason for the existence of “Life on a Stick,” premiering tonight on Fox, than to occupy half an hour of airtime for however many weeks it can manage to stay alive (h/2 x w). There is nothing here that was crying to be said. It barely has a premise, really, just a setting: a corn-dog stand inside a shopping mall, whose employees wear awful colorful costumes clearly inspired by those worn at the real Hot Dog on a Stick (various locations). Perhaps it was a visit to one such stand that started the wheels turning in the head of creator Victor Fresco, who has been connected as a producer and/or writer with several better series, including “Almost Perfect,” “Mad About You” and “Evening Shade.” But they stopped turning too soon.

The series does put Amy Yasbeck (“Wings”) to work again, admirably enough, but why she is doing this particular thing and not something else is harder to explain. And though Yasbeck is the nearest to a star the show has to offer, she is at the fringes of the action here, sidelined into parenthood along with screen husband Matthew Glave, while the show focuses primarily on the younger generation, by whom they are mostly confused and frightened, even after umpteen years.

These include his nearly-19 slacker son Laz (Zachary Knighton), her snarky 16-year-old daughter Molly (Saige Thompson) and their precocious 9-year-old son Gus (Frankie Ryan Manriquez) -- it is a second-marriage-for-both situation, and was originally titled “Related by Family” -- along with Laz’s idiot friend Fred (Charlie Finn) and predictably perfect girlfriend Lily (Rachel Lefevre). The principal characters -- which are not so much characters as embodied attitudes with a few stray details taped on -- seem to have been shaped and cast in such a way as to remind viewers of the network’s “That ‘70s Show,” with Knighton, Finn and Lefevre standing in for Topher Grace, Ashton Kutcher and Laura Prepon. But whether this was coincidental or intentional or unconscious, I don’t know, nor does it much matter.

The hot dog stand scenes add nothing to the subject of fast food that wasn’t already rendered by Judge Reinhold and Stuart Cornfeld in a few scenes from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” The nightmare boss here is Mr. Hut (Maz Jobrani), in a characterization one might call racially insensitive were Jobrani not himself actually Persian. As delivered by Finn (working in the venerable “Dude!” vein of comic acting) the name “Mr. Hut” also brings to mind “Fast Times,” insistently reminiscent as it is of Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli pronouncing the name of his nemesis, “Mr. Hand.” Intentional homage or lack of imagination? Let us imagine the former.

All that said, the production values are high, and the players are nice to look at and give the material everything the material asks of them, and perhaps a little more. (Glave plays his TV dad as if on a cocktail of mood elevators -- his performance is the one thing here that feels at all new.) There are some undeniable laughs and the vicarious fun of watching foxy teens get frisky; for balance, the adults, who are also foxy, get frisky too. Even the complete and utter expectedness of it all, and the way the show requires only the mildest sort of attention from the viewer, can be seen in a kind of positive light, as the pleasure of an undemanding familiar taste, fatty and fried and full of reconstituted odds and ends, a corn dog for the soul.

*

‘Life on a Stick’

Where: Fox

When: 9:30 tonight

Ratings: TV-14 DLS (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with advisory for coarse language, suggestive dialogue and sex)

Zachary Knighton...Laz

Charlie Finn...Fred

Rachelle Lefevre...Lily

Maz Jobrani...Mr. Hut

Amy Yasbeck...Michelle

Matthew Glave...Rick

Executive producer, writer and creator Victor Fresco.