Wednesday Night Television

ABC now has four consecutive sitcoms on Wednesday nights that don't rely on a laugh track. And the newest of the lot, "Suburgatory," may very well be the best new sitcom of the 2011-12 season.

As the title suggests, "Suburagatory" (on at 8:30 PM ET, after "The Middle") sounds like just another piece of entertainment depicting how much the suburbs suck. But it's more than that. The suburbs here are not a Levittown on Long Island or in Bucks County, Pennsylvania but a fictional upper-class Westchester County (New York) enclave. The perspective of this upper-crust suburbia is not that of a cynical punk rock burnout but that of a savvy high school girl wise beyond her years who has lived in Manhattan and knows there's more to life than an upper-class subdivision.

Tessa Altman (played by Jane Levy) is the high school girl, uprooted from New York City by her architect father, George (Jeremy Sisto) who decides to move to Westchester County after finding a box of unopened condoms in Tessa's drawer. The lure of illicit behavior has convinced him to move himself and his daughter to suburbia so that Tessa can have a better life. Actually, Tessa is worse off, cast in a sea of shallow phonies and complacent conformists she has nothing in common with. Her father George is hoping she'll be able to reach maturity in a safer and more comfortable environment, but it turns out he's the one who needs the comfort of the suburbs. He's a single dad who can't relate to his daughter and is learning by experience how to raise a teenager. And, it turns out she's savvier than he is; he's still finding his way in the world, trying to navigate his way around this alien culture Tessa can see right through. He's also having a hard time finding true love; Frasier Crane had better luck with women by comparison.

As Dallas Royce, a seemingly shallow housewife with an absent husband and who only hints to George that a love interest is possible, Cheryl Hines gives a sense of substance and warmth underneath her character's plastic persona. Even more interesting is the friendship between Tessa and Lisa Marie (played by Allie Grant), a nerdy but sweet girl who's embarrassed by her family. The various twists and turns that ensue - along with Tessa's attempts to adapt to or at least cope with her surroundings (with the pain of having to deal with Dallas's glamour queen daughter Dalia) are fascinating.

So, yes, I'm a fan of this show, which replaced "Better Than You" in ABC's 8:30 PM ET time slot. And after several trial-and-error program schedulings, it looks like ABC finally has a solid Wednesday night lineup. This includes "Happy Endings" at 9:30 PM Eastern (after "Modern Family"), a sitcom that's definitely an acquired taste, plus the one-hour drama "Revenge," with Emily VanCamp, at 10 PM Eastern. I haven't seen that, but it appears to have succeeded where at least three ABC dramas in that same time slot have failed in as many years.

I watch the first three shows in ABC's Wednesday night lineup regularly, and that's actually more shows than I watch on NBC for the whole week. I believe I'm not alone in that respect.

(Aside: NBC is debuting a new series produced by Steven Spielberg [who famously graced NBC with the series "Amazing Stories" in the eighties] about staging a Broadway musical, "Smash", which, I'm led to understand, is basically a scripted version of talent contest shows [or a "Glee" ripoff]. It's about a musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe and stars Debra Messing - Debra Messing - as one of its writers. Debuting this coming Monday at 10 PM Eastern, it displaces Brian Williams' newsmagazine "Rock Center," which will go against "Modern Family" and "Happy Endings" at 9 PM Eastern on Wednesdays. Next Wednesday: an interview with yet another woman who claimed she was seduced by John F. Kennedy. It's official: NBC is beyond desperate.)