Trust me: 'Happily Divorced' is not that great

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

Even cute gets old. Usually that little fact of life is more a blessing than a problem.

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  TV Land

  Fran Drescher and John Michael Higgins in 'Happily Divorced,' on the middle-age nostalgia channel.

TV Land

Fran Drescher and John Michael Higgins in 'Happily Divorced,' on the middle-age nostalgia channel.

Obviously, Fran Drescher has aged since her delightful star-making 1993 turn in The Nanny, as have we all. If she hadn't, for one thing, she wouldn't be on TV Land, which is trying to franchise middle-age nostalgia.

She's still a talented comic actor. She still has that distinctive, nerve-jangling voice. She's still a beautiful woman.

What she doesn't seem to realize, at least in this semi-autobiographical show that she and her ex-husband Peter Marc Jacobson have written for her, is that she's not precisely the same beautiful woman she was 20 years ago.

Yet here she is, trying to pull off the exact same routine that worked for her in her 30s ? the same contrast between the sexy come-hither bod and the comic go-thither voice ? and not noticing that it doesn't sit as well on her as it did then. The act is tired, and at times more than a little inappropriate. But then the same can be said of her underachieving sitcom, which wastes Best in Show's John Michael Higgins in a stereotypically swishy role as Fran's gay soon-to-be-ex husband.

The sole surprise Wednesday night is how the show could take a real-life situation ? Jacobson came out as gay after they separated ? and make it seem so divorced from reality.

Happily Divorced
TV Land, 10:30 ET/PT Wednesday
* out of four

The first problem is timing. Drescher's husband came out after their marriage was over, where the fictional Fran (a florist here) gets the news dropped on her in bed. Immediately after sex. Yes, that post-coital component does lead into the show's one funny line. ("You've never been with a man. Trust me, it's not that great.") But her blithe acceptance of the situation also strips Divorced of whatever stakes and emotional weight it might have carried.

Not that there was going to be much real-world weight here anyway, not considering the pitched-to-the-back-rows performances, the cheap over-lit glow of the production, and the feeling you get that the network is aiming for as innocuously bland as possible.

As it did for schedule companion Hot in Cleveland, TV Land has gathered some fine performers here, including Rita Moreno and Robert Walden as Fran's parents and D.W. Moffett as her potential boyfriend. And, as on Hot, the network seems to think the mere gathering of talent is enough.

Trust me, that approach gets old. Fast.

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