By FIONA RAE
There's something old and something new tonight in TV3's early-evening line-up, although new sitcom Stark Raving Mad has borrowed from an old formula for its laughs.
The aliens of 3rd Rock From the Sun (7.30 pm) return with all their human troubles - and still using television and the movies as reference points.
Tonight's episode has them trying to deal with Vicki Dubcek's baby, which was fathered by The Big Giant Head last season. In a spoof noir-style scene, Dick tries to kill the reporter who wants the alien baby story.
Later, Harry bids farewell to Vicki in melodramatic style.
It's a simple premise: if aliens landed, what would they think? 3rd Rock's ability to poke fun at human foibles, television and the abducted-by-aliens industry has seen the series run and run - it's just been renewed for a sixth season in the US.
And as a measure of its success, John Lithgow and Kristen Johnston have again been nominated for Emmys, and even William Shatner is up for an award for his guest role as The Big Giant Head.
Little Doogie Howser (Neil Patrick Harris) is all grown up now and has a new sitcom of his very own with Stark Raving Mad (8 pm), in which he is Felix Unger to Tony Shalhoub's Oscar Madison.
Harris plays Henry McNeely, a neurotic neatnik book editor (he keeps sanitiser in his pocket to use after shaking hands), who is assigned to Ian Stark (Shalhoub), a horror-writing slob with writer's block after his first acclaimed novel.
It's another simple idea - it worked for Tony Randall and Jack Klugman back in 1970 - but it's too early to tell if Stark Raving Mad will last five years.
One thing's for sure, even sitcoms these days have high production values. The Odd Couple started out with one camera and a laugh track - tonight's pilot of Stark Raving Mad has better lighting than most sitcoms, several good-looking sets (especially Ian's apartment) and a couple of superbly edited sequences.
The show - written by Steven Levitan, who's responsible for Just Shoot Me - is everything we expect from an American sitcom: smart and pacy with some self-conscious hamming.
But there's a niggle here that it could descend into jokes for jokes' sake.
If he's not careful, Shalhoub's character can come off as an annoying schoolfriend who plays practical jokes on phobic Henry, rather than carrying on his strong beginning as a raving mad guy who picks his teeth with a machete.
Levitan says he got the idea for Ian Stark after reading that Stephen King "hears voices that compel him to write" and thought it would be interesting to do a show about somebody who is "very dysfunctional when they're in the real world."
The critics were cruel in the US, but viewers voted with their remotes, and even on the internet, giving Stark Raving Mad a People's Choice Award for favourite new comedy.
But in an industry where sitcoms are given the flick in the blink of an executive's eye, Stark Raving Mad will need all the craziness it can muster to hang on.
TV: Alienated aliens and an even odder couple
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.