'Happily Divorced'

TV Land's mission of bringing back old-time, feel-good, just-plain-funny sitcoms isn't proving quite as easy as the network made it look with "Hot in Cleveland."
"Happily Divorced," TV Land's third shot at a new old-style sitcom - the George Segal parents-and-son romp "Retired at 35" is the other one - tries harder than "Cleveland" and generates fewer laughs.
"Happily Divorced" is not without its pleasures, however, starting with Fran Drescher, who co-created the show and plays the lead character, a florist named Fran.
Okay, Drescher, who most famously starred in "The Nanny," may be an acquired taste. But if you like her combination of attitude and accent, she provides a full dose of both here.
The premise of the show is that after 18 years of marriage, Fran's husband, Peter (John Michael Higgins), announces he's gay. The first show opens with that scene and then flashes forward six months, at which time they're divorced, but Peter is still living in the house because he can't afford a place of his own.
He is, ironically, a real estate agent, which explains his current income-generating problem.
Fran and Peter still get along just fine. She still reminds him where his many medicines are and he still invites her to the annual "Sound of Music" sing-along, to which he wears shorts and an Alpine hat.
If that suggests the show contains a lot of gay jokes, it does. They're gay-friendly jokes, however, the kind that gay folks and straight folks generally will find just as funny.
When Fran starts to date again, for instance, Peter admits he's a little upset, because "I never pictured you sleeping with another man."
"Ditto," she replies.
Or, back when Fran thinks Peter will be moving out, he says, "Where am I supposed to go?"
"You're gay," she says. "Go to the YMCA."
You see the dilemma here: While this joke isn't particularly offensive, it also isn't all that clever. A lot of setup for modest reward.
"Happily Divorced" has a cinema-vérité back story, as it happens. Drescher created it with Peter Marc Jacobson, who also co-created "The Nanny" and is Drescher's real-life ex-husband.
After they divorced, he acknowledged to her he was gay. Sometimes when life hands you a lemon, you make sitcoms.
It also lets them share some of their good-natured banter with the world. Like when Fran's date says, "I love her voice," Peter replies, "Give it time."
To flesh out its fuller sitcom potential, "Happily Divorced" also gives Fran an extremely annoying set of parents, played by Rita Moreno and Robert Walden. She has a best friend, Judi (Tichina Arnold), and a flower deliveryman named Cesar (Valente Rodriguez).
It may be that all this will develop an interesting story. On opening night, though, it feels like the show's primary goal is to set up one-liners - which is not how the great shows we see on TV Land reruns got to be great.