Network wannabe Warner Brothers jumps the gun on fall tonight by premiering the first new show of the season.
However, "Kirk" (6:30 p.m., WGN; 7:30 p.m., Ch. 30) is not exactly something you'll want to interrupt your summer for.The "Kirk" in question here is none other than Kirk Cameron, who spent seven seasons playing Mike Seaver on the hit sitcom "Growing Pains." Ostensibly, he's all grown up here and playing sort of a reverse role from that earlier show.
As the series opens, Kirk has just graduated from college and moved to New York City. His plans include becoming a famous illustrator, but in the meantime he's working at a billboard company.
And his plans of leading a swinging young life are suddenly interrupted when his aging aunt announces she's getting married and moving to Florida - leaving him to raise his three younger siblings - 15-year-old Corey (Will Estes), 13-year-old Phoebe (Taylor Fry) and 7-year-old Russell (Courtland Mead).
Their parents died some years earlier, apparently.
The humor tends to run along the lines of the youngest brother getting stuck in a toilet and Kirk feeding the kids popsicles for breakfast. There are also the prerequisites gooey moments, complete with "oooohs" and "aaaahs" from the audience. (Or, perhaps, from the laugh track.)
Thrown into the mix are Kirk's best friend, Eddie (Louis Vanaria) - a perpetual juvenile - the gorgeous young medical student who lives across the hall (Cameron's real-life wife, Chelsea Noble), and the sardonic, fortysomething build-ing manager (Debra Mooney).
Cameron still has a certain appeal, and Vanaria has his moments. But the three younger kids are pretty much interchangeable with any number of other smart-mouth sitcom kids, and Noble's presence is insignificant.
That this is TV comedy-by-the-numbers comes as no surprise, coming from the creators and producers of shows like "Family Matters" and "Step by Step." But with that kind of experience, Bill Bickley and Michael Warren should have been able to put together something that looks less like an amateur high-school play and more like professional tele-vi-sion.
"Kirk" is remarkably forgettable and would better be soon forgotten altogether.
After previews tonight and Aug. 30, "Kirk" moves to its regular time slot on Sunday, Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. on Ch. 30.
DAVE SELLS TO HBO: David Letterman's Worldwide Pants Inc. will be producing a comedy series pilot for Home Box Office.
The series, "Emmett & Earl," created by former "Late Night with David Letterman" writer Adam Resnik, is described as a "dark comedy set in 1950s Pittsburgh" that "revolves around two men who run a failing storage facility, depicting their day-to-day problems, including running a business in tough times, their money-making schemes, and their relationships with their wives."
Worldwide Pants originally pitched the show to CBS, which turned it down. (CBS did pick up another Pants sitcom, "The Bonnie Hunt Show," for the fall.)
"I'm very excited for HBO and America," Letterman said in an official statement. "Also, why does my cable go out during high winds?"
The fact that Letterman's company is producing a show for HBO is at least a bit ironic, given that HBO is producing a movie based on "The Late Shift," Bill Carter's book about the struggle that went on behind the scenes that resulted in Jay Leno succeeding Johnny Carson on NBC's "Tonight Show" and Letterman leaving NBC for CBS.
Letterman recently told TV critics that he considered the HBO movie "probably the single largest waste of film since my wedding photos."
HOW DUMB CAN YOU BE? Just about 1.3 million cable customers in the United States paid in the neighborhood of $40 to watch the non-fight between Mike Tyson and Peter McNeeley on Saturday.
Including those watching in about 85 other countries, the TV revenue for this fight exceeded $80 million.
Apparently, there are several suckers born every minute.
"CHRISTY" COMING BACK - IN RERUNS: Fans of the canceled CBS series "Christy" will get another chance to see the series - if they subscribe to cable.
The Family Channel will begin Saturday-evening airings of "Christy" on Oct. 7. Keep in mind, however, that these are reruns of the shows CBS already broadcast.
So there will not be a conclusion to the cliffhanger with which the series ended. (If you want to know how it turned out, buy the book.)