In television, drama is hard, comedy is harder, and serio-comedy is darn near impossible. As is clearly demonstrated by "Queens Supreme" (Friday, 9 p.m., CBS/Ch. 2), which tries too hard to be too many different things.
This is a legal show about not lawyers but judges. And an odd group of judges they are in this Queens, N.Y., courthouse.
Judge Jack Moran (Oliver Platt) is cynical and difficult. Newly appointed Judge Kim Vicidomini (Annabella Sciorra) is young and ambitious. Judge Rose Barnea (L. Scott Caldwell) is blunt and tough. And Thomas O'Neill (Robert Loggia) is the voice of reason.
This is an attempt to humanize judges, but they seem less like real people than the inventions of scriptwriters. It isn't easy to make characters quirky and believable — and these characters, while definitely odd, just don't seem real.
In Friday's premiere, the story revolves around a juror who takes Moran and his fellow jurors hostage. It's a storyline that's pretty silly until the end, when it becomes just roll-your-eyes ludicrous. And the second episode spends waaay too much time on a stupid case involving a porn video.
There are a lot of good actors in the cast — including Marcy Harriell and James Madio as legal assistants, and appearances by Kyra Sedgwick (as an assistant district attorney) and Vincent Pastore (who seems to be trading on his "Sopranos" notoriety) in recurring roles — but the show isn't nearly as good as the people in the cast.
Which is really too bad.