Better With You

It's a low-key premise, but not a bad one. And when you have comic actors this solid on-board, you can almost make believe that this flimsiness has substance.

It's ABC's attempt to replicate last season's wildly successful intergenerational comedy Modern Family, and, like many genetic experiments, it ends in mutant disaster.

This likable and predictable new sitcom about three couples in the same family probably wouldn't get a lot of attention all by itself. But slung in the hammock between "The Middle" and "Modern Family," two established sitcoms about endearingly off-center families, it should snuggle right in.

It's a temperature-controlled How I Met Your Mother. [27 Sep 2010, p.56]

The whole thing perks along like a Honda Civic and is just about as exciting.

Better With You might try to be a straight-up joke/punchline/laughtrack sitcom. But that dooms it to comparisons with the other ABC shows such as Modern Family and The Middle that bookend it on Wednesday night. Those shows both have more distinct attitudes toward institutions like families and, particularly, marriage, than Better With You seems likely to find.

The executive producers, Shana Goldberg-Meehan and Greg Malins, both worked on "Friends," and the jokes in Better With You have the polish and the off-center, sneakily funny quality that marked that show. But the single-family multigeneration setup seems to have facilitated an undertone of nastiness and desperation in the humor, most clearly expressed in the condescending portrayal of the youngest couple.

It's not a bad sitcom, just a bit ordinary given the company it's keeping.

Better With You fits in with that lesser two-thirds of ABC's returning sitcom block, and while it's by no means an eyesore, it hasn't done anything to improve the neighborhood.