Screensavors: Anchors away

Back to You is a rather fast-paced, otherwise mildly entertaining program.

By ARYEH DEAN COHEN
Back to You 248.88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Back to You 248.88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
It must've seemed like a good idea. Take two consummate comedy pros, Kelsey Grammer (Cheers, Frasier) and Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond), stick them in a familiar broadcast TV format (Mary Tyler Moore, Murphy Brown, Lou Grant) and watch the ratings pour in. Wrong. The gamble taken by FOX-TV, even sweetening the pot by offering this new show a lead-in from American Idol last fall, just didn't pay off. A look at the opening episode of Back To You made it easy to see why. The most surprising reason was the show's script. Turned in by Christopher Lloyd, whose work on The Golden Girls and Frasier was excellent over the years, falls flat. Though even the great ones mess up. Lloyd was also responsible for the awful Out of Practice. In Back To You, despite the great cast, things just don't work. With Heaton imitating a man with flies in his throat alongside a bevy of desperate sexual references used for laughs, there's a problem. Grammer plays Chuck Darling, once Pittsburgh's darling anchorman. Now he's back, after ten years, following his dismissal from an LA gig after he lost his cool in a rage. Chuck used to co-anchor the news with Kelly Carr (Heaton), who's not thrilled to have him back. She welcomes him home but, after a few minutes together she bursts out, "I cannot do this with you again, you preening gasbag." Grammer, of course, is a preening gasbag - he almost always is. And Heaton is the wise-mouth she was in Raymond. Watching them spar, then make up, and then spar again doesn't make for interesting comedy. There are the standard secondary newsroom characters: Murphy Brown's over-anxious news director (take a bow, Miles); the smart-mouth field reporter Gary (played by Out of Practice's Ty Burrell), and the crazy sports dude who vomits before going on every night (wonderfully played by the hilarious Fred Willard). There's also the oversexed weather woman, Montana Diaz Herrera - whose real name is…Sally Lerner. Herrera's character is the target for the way too many sex jokes in the rather fast-paced, otherwise mildly entertaining program. It's not so much that Back to You is bad, it's that it's not any better. Especially, considering its pedigree and amazing cast. FOX obviously spent a bundle on the two leads, but when the ratings bonanza didn't materialize, they pulled the plug. The show was cancelled last spring in the US, but we should get all 18 episodes on our TVs here. Both Grammer and Heaton will find new gigs, and neither needs the money. But the failure of Back to You only proves something that's no news flash: good writing is what counts, not mere star power. Back To You airs on Wednesdays at 9:15 p.m. on Channel 3.