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'Common Law'

ABC's "Common Law," a sitcom about two people working, and carrying on a forbidden romance, in a law office is another of the new season's Eminently Expendables. It doesn't leap out of the set and poke you in the eye, but it doesn't really invite you in for a back rub, either.

In the premiere, at 9:30 tonight on Channel 7, we meet the loving couple: Harvard-trained lawyer John Alvarez (Greg Giraldo) and fellow attorney Nancy Slaton (Megyn Price), who are not supposed to be having an affair, since they work for the same uptight firm. A big class-action suit is tossed their way, but John almost screws it up because he runs off to spring a friend from jail.

Although it's good to have a Hispanic character at the center of a series, it's not so good that he's not at all surprised to find a friend in trouble with the law, as if this were very common in the community.

Making John less attractive is the fact that his office is a shrine to the '60s and that he frequently picks up a guitar and commences to plunk. Among the all-too-stock characters is Francis (John DiMaggio), a big dumb messenger who refers to urinating as "shaking hands with the president"; and Gregory Sierra as Luis, John's old-fashioned father -- so old-fashioned he still uses epithets like "queer."

It's simply not a pleasure to make their acquaintance, and so the idea of a long-term relationship -- say one lasting two weeks -- seems out of the question.