The search for television’s next hit comedy is leading the networks into unfamiliar territory. Thank goodness.
Starting this week, “How I Met Your Mother” on CBS plays with time and flashbacks to recount a bachelor’s numerous strikeouts on the way to marriage.
And “My Name Is Earl” on NBC ventures into rough rural turf with a ne’er-do-well as the oddly likable protagonist.
Neither series features a cute young mom and an older, paunchier dad trading barbs with precocious kids around the breakfast table in a gleaming suburban kitchen to the accompaniment of a roaring laugh track. Both offer compelling reasons to revisit the half-hour.
By all appearances, “How I Met Your Mother,” at 7:30
tonight on KCNC-Channel 4, is a promising comedy with a twist. Then again, the way the series is constructed, it’s tougher than usual to judge by the half-hour pilot.
From the vantage point of 2030, Ted (Josh Radnor) tells the tale of how he met the love of his life. The grown-up Ted talks (in a voice-over by Bob Saget) of his misspent youth, with his two kids as an audience. As they sit on the couch, he relates the dating wars he endured in Manhattan 25 years earlier.
Will the kids’ mother, Ted’s wife, be revealed in the first few episodes? In the first season? Suffice to say the premiere episode leaves viewers hanging but hooked.
Who knew a cute young bachelor could be so hellbent on finding commitment, falling in love with potential mates as he fumbles toward his true love?
Radnor is adorable, but it’s the surrounding players who keep the scenes crackling. Alyson Hannigan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Neil Patrick Harris of “Doogie Howser, M.D.” offer new comic sides of themselves. (Harris, in particular, takes off in the role of a sleazy, womanizing bad boy, a counterpoint to earnest Ted.)
Touted as a male answer to “Sex and the City,” the half- hour suggests that what (some) men want is really not so different from what women want, minus the shoes.
NBC’s “My Name Is Earl,” premiering at 8 p.m. Tuesday on KUSA-Channel 9, is the antithesis of the yuppie comedy.
After years of trying to recapture the magic that was “Friends” in a long list of failed shows featuring young, slick, upwardly mobile, urban, (nearly always white) singles, the network has chosen a half-hour that feels very un-NBC-like.
That’s a compliment.
Instead of loft-living pals in designer threads trading sarcastic zingers while desperately seeking dates, “My Name Is Earl” centers on an unkempt yokel, an all-around loser who is also a petty crook. He narrates his story soaked in homespun philosophy – or is that just stale beer? If it’s true that what goes around comes around, Earl has a cosmic debt to pay.
In Tuesday night’s opener, Earl, – Jason Lee (“Almost Famous”) – wins $100,000 in the lottery. He promptly loses the winning ticket. To have good things happen to him, Earl figures he is required to do good things – he recently heard about karma from Carson Daly, and he’s sold on the concept.
He makes a list of all the wrongs he must right, the people he has cheated or hurt, the plans he has fouled up. Each week the story will take him to a different situation to set the world right, allowing him to interact with new characters (guest shots!) as well as his buddies and his not-so-swift brother.
Fortunately there’s as much going on inside Earl’s head as there is onscreen. Much of the humor derives from his goofy, twisted observations about love, loss and life. And then there are the sight gags. His fellow travelers, including his dim brother (played by Ethan Suplee) are deeply eccentric losers. If you liked “Raising Arizona,” the Coen brothers’ 1987 rural underbelly film comedy, you’ll find similar off-kilter humor and funky truth from the heartland here.
After years of sitcom slop, viewers this season may discover it’s safe to go back to the half-hour format. Here’s hoping.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
