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'Party Girl': A Good Time Had by All

The last time the Fox network introduced a truly terrific show, network executives couldn't wait to cancel it. "Profit," an enticingly sinister drama about a modern-day Sammy Glick, lasted only a few weeks. It had wit and style and sophistication, and at Fox, those things are almost considered heresy.

Now comes a Fox sitcom, one of the first shows of the new fall season to premiere, that's full of snap and sass -- and actual laughs, too -- and one wonders whether it's safe to become attached to it. "Party Girl" premieres tonight at 9, and it makes for a very happy half-hour.

On the surface, "Party Girl" sounds like just another sitcom about a single woman on her own in the big city. But there are plenty of distinctive complications, the most delightful of them being Christine Taylor in the title role. Taylor, who was Marcia in the two "Brady Bunch" movies, is a delightful comic actress, as funny as she wants to be -- and as funny as Cybill Shepherd tries to be on the second-rate CBS sitcom "Cybill."

Taylor is up there with irrepressible bombshell Jenny McCarthy of MTV's "Singled Out" as one of the liveliest live wires on the current scene. And she's accessibly gorgeous, too.

As Mary, whose refrigerator is full of perfumes and whose closet is carefully categorized by designer, Taylor plays a young woman who isn't dumb or ditzy but who does have remarkably frivolous values. These start to change when in desperation she turns for a job to her godmother, Judy, played by ace actress Swoosie Kurtz, formerly of NBC's "Sisters."

Kurtz's comic timing is poetry in motion; she makes the best dialogue sparkle and second-best dialogue shine. Judy is the director of a branch of the New York Public Library, and when is the last time someone like that was a lead character in a sitcom? Not only that but there are many scenes set in the library itself! Perhaps Fox is slowly changing its ways.

Now it's true that on the premiere, Mary gets herself locked inside a medieval chastity belt, which sounds like an excuse for cheap jokes but really proves quite funny. It's a '90s "I Love Lucy" situation, and the episode includes outrageous slapstick at Mary's favorite restaurant. An old man takes a cake in the face.

Somehow even this is very refreshing after all those sitcoms about single friends who sit around making neurotic wisecracks all day.

The supporting cast is blissfully good, especially John Cameron Mitchell, rising above the stereotype of the tart-talking gay guy he plays. When he sees Mary in her chastity belt he says, "Boy, Depends have come a long way since the Middle Ages." When he tastes the punch prepared for a party, he complains, "Too much eye of newt." But Mitchell makes more of this chap than a font of bitchy banter; Derrick's platonic affection for Mary seems genuine and touching.

Merrin Dungey smartly plays Wanda, a veteran at the library who resents the inexperienced Mary coming aboard, and Matt Borlenghi brings a touch of dignity to the traditional role of the hunky dumb guy, in this case a bartender.

Taylor, meanwhile, invests Mary with complexity and a touch of poignancy. This is a woman who was brought up by her mother to believe that "work is what boring people do when other people are, like, living," and yet deep down, she's not shallow.

The writing by Beth Fieger Falkenstein and others is blithe and buoyant. Unlike most of those who've produced new fall sitcoms, the creators of "Party Girl" haven't just rearranged elements and characters from other shows. This one has a particular crackle all its own.

"I should have known better than to hire you," Judy tells Mary after a disastrous first day at the library. "Curse this heart of gold!" Later, though, Judy has to admit that while it was wacky, "I got a real big kick out of it." That's how you may feel once you get a gander at "Party Girl." I sure did.