At his best, there's no one funnier than Bob Newhart.
And in "George & Leo" (8:30 p.m., Ch. 2), Newhart is at his best. This is the funniest new show of the season.Newhart is George - a stammering everyman who doesn't know quite what to make of the insanity that suddenly erupts around him. Insanity in the person of Leo, played by a perfectly cast Judd Hirsch.
George is a retired stockbroker who's running a bookstore on Martha's Vineyard. His son, Ted (Jason Bateman), runs the restaurant across the street.
Ted is about to marry his very pregnant fiancee, Casey (Bess Meyer), and decides to surprise her by bringing her long-lost father - Leo - to the wedding. But she doesn't want to have anything to do with the guy.
And neither does George. Leo is a small-time gangster and irresponsible lout. He's annoys George from the moment they meet.
"You have a stuttering problem, don't you?" Leo asks a befuddled George.
"I stammer," George replies. "And it gets worse when I run into someone who's obnoxious."
George, of course, is the calm and steady one. But Leo isn't quite buying it.
"Your son got my daughter pregnant out of wedlock," Leo says. "Now what kind of a father are you?"
"At least I was there when it happened," George replies - as a look of consternation crosses his face.
It turns out that Leo is a bagman for the mob - and he's run off with $25,000 of their money. There's a hitman on his tail.
"These Vegas boys, they don't just kill you, you know. They torture you first," Leo says.
"Like how?" George asks. "They make you go to the Liberace museum?"
(And only Newhart can get a laugh by stammering out "Goodbye" to the hitman.)
But the show centers on this mismatched pair and their children. A reluctant George tries to patch things up between Leo and the about-to-give-birth Casey just before the wedding.
"It's not traditional to see the bride before the ceremony," Ted says.
"There are a lot of things that are not traditional to do with the bride before the ceremony," George replies.
Meyer is fine as Casey, and Darryl Theirse is very funny as George's bookstore employee. The weak link here is a whiny Bateman, but it's not enough of a weakness to damage the show.
"George & Leo" shows every indication that it could become as good a show as "The Bob Newhart Show" and "Newhart." Apparently, lightning can strike thrice when Newhart is involved.