'Kath & Kim' Is a House Of Mirth

Like all dopey bozos worthy of the reputation, these two suffer from rotten luck and severely limited intelligence. Thus, their old foe Larry (Kenny Hotz) gets to try the experimental genitals enlarger while they cope with impending motherly fatherhood. Their attempts include duping a luckless sap of a neighbor (Joe Pingue) into posing as the world's tallest and tubbiest baby.

The risque words and situations in "Testees" -- few if any of which would be permitted on the major or minor broadcast networks -- illustrate yet again the separate set of rules by which cable, even basic cable, operates, free as it is from clumsy FCC intervention. Will there be howls of protest and charges of indecency from the usual suspects? Probably not. Condemning "Testees" would likely contribute to its popularity which, especially among tween-aged boys, ought to be considerable.

For the program to debut on a solemn high holy day for Jews is unfortunate timing, but then, propriety of any kind is utterly alien to the sensibility that produces these nose-thumbing, dumb-cluck comedies. Besides, if television can stand "South Park" and "Family Guy" and many other outrages that are considerably less amusing, then "Testees" deserves a test drive, no matter how testy some viewers might become.

'Life on Mars'

Despite the prestigious presence of stars such as Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli, Lisa Bonet and Gretchen Mol, "Life on Mars," a new ABC crime drama, comes off as naggingly undistinguished. When you get right down to it, there's not much point in getting right down with it.

"Life on Mars" crossbreeds cop drama with time-travel adventure, even though it seems that at least one time-travelin' show flops every year.

Both too little and too much seem to be happening in "Life on Mars," and the marquee names turn out to get much less screen time than an awfully humdrum young hero. He's Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara), the unfortunate bloke who takes the obligatory knock on the noggin that transports him from 2008 -- a great year to be transported away from, of course -- and back to 1973, the year he was born and, son of a gun, also the year that a little boy was set on a path that would lead him to crime, corruption and creepy stuff right out of "Silence of the Lambs."

For about the first 15 minutes of "Mars," our police-detective hero runs around town in pursuit of a deranged serial killer who takes the beautiful, seemingly ageless Bonet (playing mysterious Maya, Sam's honeybunch) as his prisoner. As Detective Sam briefly rests, the camera suddenly zooms in on his iPod; David Bowie is asking the musical question, "Is there life on Mars?" Then there's a conk and a bonk and a sort of a clunk, and Sam's head hits the pavement, and things go all swirly-whirly and zap. He wakes to discover horror upon horror: an 8-track tape player installed in his car and a photograph of Richard Nixon mounted on a police station wall.

Run, run, run for your lives!

One nuisance common to almost all time-travel fictions is the period during which the hero or heroine must face the reality of having journeyed backward or forward through the ages. You know -- at first he can't believe it, then he can't get anybody else to believe it, then he's called nutty, then he goes batty and so on. It's all predictably and ploddingly done in "Life on Mars" -- except for one brilliantly effective piece of visual punctuation that speaks worlds in an instant.

We won't tell you what it is, but you'll know it when you see it. But one moment can't save an entire hour.

"Life on Mars" occasionally scores a nice bit of eerie spookiness, but the premise remains more party-pooper than mind-boggler. One hour of exposure to "Life on Mars" and you might indeed wish time travel were possible -- at least so you could travel back to the beginning of that hour and spend it some other way.

Kath & Kim (30 minutes) debuts tonight at 8:30 on Channel 4; Testees (30 minutes) debuts tonight at 10:30 on FX; Life on Mars (one hour) debuts tonight at 10 on Channel 7.