Kramer Versus ‘Michael Richards’

Despite starring one of the most gifted comedic actors in the U.S., “The Michael Richards Show” has sagging letdown written all over it.

Nothing with Richards can be all bad. So even here, in a droopy comedy that’s blurrily focused and mostly unfunny despite being retooled, he manages to score occasionally with some of those brilliant physical moves that endeared him to the multitudes as Jerry Seinfeld’s neighbor and partner in farce, Cosmo Kramer.

One of them is less a double take than a double tic. Well, you just have to be there. And when he whips out a pipe and becomes a mumbling pseudo-sophisticate, Kramerspeak briefly lives again.

Yet what was Richards thinking when he signed on for another NBC series that has him playing someone with qualities not unlike one of the most indelible sitcom characters ever? Filling his own shoes as Kramer is impossible, so you’d figure him to run the other way.

The comparisons between bumbling private eye Vic Nardozza and Richards’ signature “Seinfeld” character are inevitable. Vic is not as loopily extraterrestrial as Kramer and has at least minor credibility as a functioning human. But the similarities are uncomfortably close in this series from several “Seinfeld” writer-producers.

William Devane plays the owner, Bill Cobbs, a weird older grump, Kevin Blakely a peeping Tom and Amy Farrington a receptionist in an office whose star performer is Vic, despite the aura of incompetence he projects. Tonight, after his female-seducing hunky operative rejects the assignment, Vic dons his own slicked-back Mr. Suave personality on behalf of a client who believes his sexy wife is stepping out on him.

When Amy wears black to work, meanwhile, Vic kiddingly asks her, “Where’s the funeral?” It turns out she is going to a funeral, prompting one of Richards’ trademark responses. That’s about as humorous as “The Michael Richards Show” gets, black being a fitting color for its premiere.

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“The Michael Richards Show” premieres tonight at 8 on NBC. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).