Mulaney

First things first: If you think Mulaney's set-up sounds a little familiar, you're not wrong. It's a shameless copy job of one of TV's all-time great comedies in Seinfeld, from the titular character name to the four-person nucleus of characters whose mundane lives are mined for laughs. Here again is a sitcom about nothing, but whereas that classic misdirection clicked in all the right ways for Seinfeld, it misses the mark entirely in this laborious show that does little justice to the talents of its proven cast and the main star in particular.

The news isn't all bad, though. Martin Short's presence rescues several scenes as only the work of a comic genius can, and Mulaney's stand-up bits -- a far better venue for his skills than the canned dialogue quips -- are worthy of respect as well. There's a genuinely funny, if acerbic, nature to the characters' relationships as well (another Seinfeld marker, of course). But at the end of the day, the sitcom genre is a cutthroat environment, and it's tough to succeed on a recycled idea and a star who's out of his element in this kind of role.