A twist on familiar sitcom trappings

Fox is the network that likes to take the conventional family sitcom box and string up crazy lights; at the network, the outrageousness of “Married ... With Children” remains a kind of prototype.

“The War at Home,” debuting Sunday night, stars Michael Rapaport as Dave, husband and father of three bluffing his way through the demands of patrimony.

“My generation has no idea how this marriage and family thing really works,” Dave tells us at the top. “Because there are no rules.”

“The War at Home” is this premise, insistently so, this premise plus Michael Rapaport in a living room, surrounded by a blond wiseacre wife (Anita Barone) and kids who represent all that has changed about fatherhood since he was a kid, when “if you brought home a paycheck and didn’t beat your kid, you were father of the year.”

The result is a show that tilts toward the familiar except for the man in the middle of it. Rapaport (“Small Time Crooks,” “True Romance” -- I could go on, but I’m picking the movies in which I recall his amusing whine) is a fresh choice as a man-boy whose wife and kids dance circles around him. There has always been something real, something believable and funny, about his jittery oafishness, his toothless machismo.

Here, in fact, I even wanted him to harangue and yell more, a strange thought to have about a sitcom. When it comes to his kids, Dave’s all wound up with anticipatory anxiety. He fears that his 15-year-old son Larry (Kyle Sullivan) is gay (the show chokes a lot of mileage out of that one), fears the dating life of his 16-year-old daughter Hillary (Kaylee DeFer). Which fills him with more dread, her going out with a college freshman or a black high school classmate? His other kid, 13-year-old Mike (Dean Collins), just wants a new video game.

The show’s political incorrectness might be too hot for ABC, but contextually, Dave’s a neighbor of Jim Belushi and George Lopez. Fox is smushing “The War at Home” into its Sunday night block of cartoon dad comedy; it comes on after “King of the Hill” and “The Simpsons” but before “Family Guy” and “American Dad.”

“The War at Home” tries to further leaven things by having the characters talk to the camera. That seemed fresh back when “The Bernie Mac Show” debuted, but Mac’s a good ranter -- a professional one, in fact. On “The War at Home,” the device seems like an extra stab at being au courant, but it’s nothing that lifts the pilot, at least, to another level.

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‘The War at Home’

Where: Fox

When: 8:30 to 9 p.m. Sunday

Ratings: TV-14 D,L,S,V (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14, with advisories for dialogue, strong language, sex, violence)

Michael Rapaport...Dave

Anita Barone...Vicky

Dean Collins...Mike

Kaylee DeFer...Hillary

Kyle Sullivan...Larry

Executive producers Rob Lotterstein, Michael Hanel, Mindy Schultheis. Writer Rob Lotterstein. Director (pilot) Andy Cadiff.