Kath & Kim Is Floppy Seconds

As if Knight Rider wasn't bad enough, NBC continues to look like a college kid "furnishing an apartment out of mom's hand-me-downs" in debuting the "witlessly Americanized" sitcom Kath & Kim, writes Robert Bianco in USA Today. The Australian remake wastes Molly Shannon's talents while "exposing the limits of Selma Blair's comedy range." The show "jerks from comedy to cautionary tale," making it a "horror show," Mark A. Perigard agrees in the Boston Herald.

The comedy that can't "decide what it's satirizing" has poor timing in debuting among financial and political turmoil, writes Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times. But the real problem is that the mother-daughter sketch between Shannon and the poorly cast Blair "is drained almost immediately of any comic value." It 's not the Aussies' fault. Quite simply, the "US version doesn't measure up." (More network television stories.)